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Overstock.com Senior Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

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Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 6 ratings

3.0

“Average” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 6 ratings

Positive	50%
Neutral	50%
Negative	0%

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3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed May 2010 in Salt Lake City, UT (took 4+ weeks)

Contacted a recruiter who forwarded my resume to the company. Then I had a phone interview with the recruiter which was not very technical. Then they scheduled a technical phone interview with 4 people. They asked standard questions like design patterns, automated testing, and architecture (describe architectural decisions in last project, my answer was not good on this one). Then they scheduled an onsite interview. They paid the flight and a decent hotel near their HQ. The onsite interview consisted of several 45min interviews with senior devs from different departments. There was also some good lunch in a nearby restaurant. For the on-site you want to prepare trees (small coding question involving recursion) and hibernate. They seem to love hibernate; I think I was asked about this in almost all of the interviews.
Initially they did not make an offer (could be because they did not think I would stay there with my personal situation), but then made me an offer a few months (!) later. I declined the offer since I already had another one.

Interview Questions

? Describe a recent project:
! me describing project
? What where the most difficult architectural decisions?

View Answers (1)

How would you write a function which prints out all the nodes of a tree.

View Answers (1)

Reason for Declining

Already accepted another offer.

Other Details

I got the interview through a Staffing Agency and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Mar 2011 (took a day)

Three or four guys on the phone, one primary interviewer. Typical resume/background questions then technical interview consisted of Java questions like
- What makes the String class unique?
- What do you need to do when you override equals method? What happens if you don't do it?
- How do you implement equals? Any attributes that should not be included, if so when and why?
- How do you avoid the lazy initialization error in Hibernate?
- Difference between inner/outer joins

Interview Questions

How is the String class unique?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Jan 2010 in Salt Lake City, UT (took 1+ week)

Phone interview then a series of on-sites (Mostly technical)

Interview Questions

Code standard binary tree traversal recursive algorithm

Answer Question

Other Details

I applied In-Person and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Group/Panel Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Mar 2009 in Salt Lake City, UT (took a day)

interviewed with couple of groups and then one group may choose you or you can pick one of the group you are interested in.

Interview Questions

web service question

Answer Question

Reason for Declining

get another offer

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Group/Panel Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Oct 2009 (took 2 weeks)

First talked to recruiter. Then filled out a technical questionnaire and submitted it back to Overstock. Then I had a phone interview with a few technical people. Then they flew me to Salt Lake City for an all day interview with various different people.

Interview Questions

A technical question involving a tree data structure

View Answers (1)

Negotiation Details

Salary and starting bonus and time to start

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, a Skills Test, a Drug Test and a Background Check.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Nov 2009 in Salt Lake City, UT (took 2 days)

- Got contacted by the recruiter
- A week later I was interviewed on the phone by 3 people. Interview lasted for one hour.
- The next day I was invited for an onsite interview at SLC office. The prompt response was appreciated.
- A week later I interviewed 10 people over the course of 5 hours. The first interview was very technical. The other interviews talked about different topics, ranging from technical to software processes and management to life in Salt Lake City.
- Most of the people at the interview were respectful and gracious.

Interview Questions

A binary tree search. The main idea was to get the recursive solution properly.

Answer Question

Negotiation Details

There was no negotiation process. More like take it or leave it. Not sure if this is the case because the recruiting was done through a recruiting service. So, make sure to have a clear idea of what salary you want. Do not expect stock options, clear bonus structure, or anything related to stock purchase plans. The main benefit is the 401K in case you value such a thing.

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a Group/Panel Interview and a Background Check.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

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