PayPal Interview Questions &amp; Reviews

Other Details

The interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2011 in San Jose, CA (took 2 months)

First of all I got email from recruiter and than he asked for the programming exercise, after I cleared programming exercise he asked me my schedule of availibity for onsite 1:1 interview. Onsite 1:1 interview contains 3 engineers and Hiring Manager total 4 hours. All the question related with only C++, I suggest you preferred GlassDoor interview questions and answer for preparation.

Interview Questions

Design strategy of person who drives a truck he/she able to drive car and identify another person which only drives car?

String reverse without using method?

1
1 2 1
1 3 3 1

View Answers (2)

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Aug 2011 in San Jose, CA (took 2 weeks)

I was referred into this company. (Networking got me in the door!) My networking contact forwarded the job posting and since it was a strong fit, I jumped on it. He introduced me (via email) the next day.

After a few email contacts and reviewing my resume, the Hiring Manager (HM) arranged a phone interview, (which had to be rescheduled), but which eventually covered my recent work history and how it tied back to the Job Description.

That was followed by a face-to-face interview, and a panel interview, during which (both) I met several people who worked with the team in which I would be working. (The cross-functional role I would be taking on was not currently filled, and I would be working with others from outside my manager's team.) All of the interviewers asked typical questions, but it did not appear that they had a "typical" interview playbook... no behavioral or Leadership questions; all were skills- and experience-based. (...at the Director Level, this surprised me.)

I got the sense that I could make material contributions to this organization, and set up a follow-up conversation with the HM for three days later. In that conversation, I described the areas in which I felt I could make the strongest contributions, and asked if that fit his idea for the role... he agreed.

I was offered a position, which I was able to negotiate-up on compensation, and accepted the job.

Interview Questions

I can't recall specific questions; only that they were all about general, overall experience.

Negotiation Details

"Straight-forward" is how I'd describe the negotiation process.

They came in very low, at first. (As my manager does not sit in Silicon Valley, I don't know whether HR assumed that I'd be in the same office, or whether they were just trying to see if I'd accept whatever they offered.) But in any event, I came armed with information, including data on what the role paid, both nation-wide and in Silicon Valley. Factoring-in a premium for my background and experience, I went in at a little above Market Rate. ...They came back at Market Rate for Silicon Valley.

That was it... two steps. All in all, very professional, very quick and... in the end, fair.

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Group/Panel Interview and a Background Check.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2011 (took a day)

It consisted of Object Oriented, PHP, SQL & Linux command questions. They mostly wanted a person who knew PHP & SQL, which I didn't. I had edited some stuff on PHP but never created anything. And in SQL, I took a one semester class which I had forgotten most of it already. It was a half an hour long question session through the phone. Some of the questions were:
-Why in Java does it require "static" in the main function?
-What's a static function?
-What's outer & inner join in SQL?
-Give me a SQL statement that returns the count of number of rows.
-How do you sort by / group by?
-What are sessions in PHP?
-What are double $$ in PHP?
-What are the following Linux commands: more, less, pipe, grep (also a problem involving grep)?

Interview Questions

-Why in Java does it require "static" in the main function?
-What's a static function?
-Give me a SQL statement that returns the count of number of rows.
-How do you sort by / group by?

-What are the following Linux commands: more, less, pipe, grep (also a problem involving grep)?

View Answers (2)

-What are double $$ in PHP?

-What are sessions in PHP?

-What's outer & inner join in SQL?

More PayPal Web Developer Interviews

Other Details

I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Jul 2009 in Paris (France) (took 6 months)

I had two interviews with the headhunter in a time frame of 4 months. After passing the headhunter filter everything happened in 14 days: Had several 1:1 with country manager first and then HR, the local management team, and the regional head. All where cordial, except one which didn't want to have the position filled. Be aware of politics in this company.

Interview Questions

Choose an internet company, tell me their business model, and create a strategy on how to expand the busienss

Negotiation Details

There was no salary negotation!

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Skills Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2011 (took a day)

The staff agency called me, asking my background, skills, and etc. Then they submit my resume to PayPal. After about 1 week, the agency called me to arrange an on-site interview at PayPal. During the interview, there were two rounds of 1:1 interview. Two engineers (or engineer managers) asked me technical questions + background info.

Interview Questions

How to build a tree using linked list?

Design a FSA - Finite State Automaton to perform search

Find longest palindrome in a string.

What is C++ inheritance, polymophism, overloading/overriding, constructor/destructors, connections to database?

Other Details

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

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Jun 2009 (took 3 days)

I was hired through a 3rd party. The first round of interviews was held at 3rd party's company and I was asked to do an online test. The test was about 1 hour long, multiple choice questions about programming and UML concepts. About a week later I got a phone interview from Paypal which lasted about 30 minutes. Questions were mostly about object oriented programming concepts like polymorphisem and inheritance. The last round of interview was a group interview, 2 software engineer and 1 manager. I had to give a presentation about my last project and they asked me programming questions. lasted about 3 hours.

Interview Questions

How to reverse a string without using a buffer

Negotiation Details

I didn't negotiate

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, a Presentation, an IQ/Intelligence Test and a Skills Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

View Comments (1)

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jun 2011 in Austin, TX (took 3 weeks)

Was contacted by a recruiter who saw my resume. I was asked if I was interested. At first, I said no because the description did not appear to be a good fit at first. When I was forwarded a more detailed description, then I was interested. I went ahead and told her to move forward for consideration. About a week later, I got a phone interview. I thought I did not convey my answers well and that I did a poor job on the phone, however, I was selected for a final round of interview.

Interview Questions

What do you think are the major accounts on the Income Statement?

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 Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Apr 2011 in Scottsdale, AZ (took a day)

It took about 5 hours. First round was the IQ tests. (ex: given a stack of penny, how do you determine if all the pennies can fill this room) Second round was finding programming errors on the pre-defined questions from the interviewer. You need to explained why there are errors and how to fix it. Next was writing code on white code for C++ exception handling. Then after that, it was the basic math function type question. (ex: given a number 1234, how do you reverse the number in 4321 format without using string.reverse). Next round is programming design.( ex: UML). Last round is with the manger. The discussion includes everything above plus oracle DB problems ( ex: indexes, how to do update to the live db tables etc.) The whole interviewing process is long but not terribly hard.

Interview Questions

How oracle stores the indexes?

Other Details

The interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, an IQ/Intelligence Test and a Skills Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Mar 2011 in San Jose, CA (took 1+ week)

Phone interview, then they flew me out for 8 in person interviews.

Interview Questions

What are your streanghts?