Twitter Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – I was looking for Mac IT support positions on Craigslist and came upon an IT Admin position for Twitter. I barely used Twitter at the time but I knew it was a growing company in the city so I applied online. Within a week, I was scheduled for a phone interview with the hiring manager. He asked the typical questions such as "Why do you want to work here?" and "Describe your daily work routine.". A few days later, I was scheduled an onsite interview.

At their downtown offices, I interviewed with about three members of the IT team and the hiring manager. The first two interviewers were the normal run of the mill, IT support workers. We talked about their deployment systems and their daily routine. They were very down to earth.

The third interviewer was somewhat difficult. He was a typical SF hipster with the hooded pullover and sandals. He threw me off by mentioning "Brian Williams" had stopped by the Twitter offices and how exciting that was. I kept on envisioning the NBC news anchor but he actually meant "Brian Wilson", the SF Giants pitcher. He noticed I had noted I had some Unix experience and he grilled me on that. He also grilled me on subjects I was unfamiliar with like web programming. He asked for my Twitter handle and chuckled as he pulled it up on his laptop.

Finally, the last interview was with the hiring manager. He went on about how he worked at Apple Corp. and hired "good people". He abruptly ended the interview because his nanny was sick and he had to pick up his child from school.

I never heard back from Twitter afterwards. The only way I found out I wasn't hired was by checking my Jobvite.

Interview Details – HR Recruiter contacted me about 2 months after I applied. After 2 phone interviews I was flown in to meet with 8 different people in varying roles within marketing and product management. Interviews are very casual and discussion-like, where the interviewers explain a bit about their world and how you would fit into it, and then they ask questions around your experience and how it might fit in, and where the opportunities to build are. I showed several projects I had worked on, and most of the folks I met with commented that my skills and experience were exactly what they were looking for.

Personality wise, I got along great with each person I spoke with, and was able to find experiences and common interest topics of discussion that answered each persons questions and concerns. Each interviewer had done something fairly notable with their career as you would expect with such a high profile company like Twitter- whether it was holding a patent, working for Google/Facebook/etc, publishing a book, starting a business or helping pioneer some new tech that has emerged over the last 15 years. Make no mistake- if you get an interview here, you will be talking to some of the smartest people in the industry.

I left feeling like I had nailed it, but after 2 weeks of following up about next steps, I was informed that it was down to myself and 1 other candidate, and that they had chosen the other person.

Interview Details – It took 1 month for the recruiter to get back to me after referral and another one month after the first phone screen, and another one month for an onsite invitation after the second phone screen.

Interview Details – HR was slow but got the work done eventually.

Interview Details – The interviewer seemed very under-prepared, almost like he felt it a burden to be interviewing me! I think he was picking what question to ask next by looking at my resume, and most of the questions were fairly generic. I expected it to be a coding interview (which is better sometimes since they ask very specific questions).

Interview Details – Short version:
The most disorganized, disrespectful, and unprofessional hiring process I've ever experienced. Avoid.

LONG version:
I applied online, and was contacted by someone from HR to solve a simple coding question and send my solution by email.
After that, had a phone interview, had to code some algorithms on a shared document. Nothing complex, but it didn't go well because I went in completely unprepared, and realized my CS basics had got quite rusty over the years.
Nevertheless, to my surprise, had a second phone interview, same type of questions, and this time things went much better, as I had been refreshing the typical algorithms and data structures material.
I was called onsite, and had a full day of interviews with several members of the engineering team. Again, same type of problems, related to algorithms, data structures, complexity analysis, the usual things.
Before this, I had been preparing even more, and I think my performance was pretty good.
Up to this point everything went super well, the people were nice, great atmosphere at the office, a very good experience.

Now HR takes over, and the chaos starts.
So after some time someone from HR contacts me, and says they're working on an offer for me. Great news!
A few emails and phone calls were exchanged, discussing possible offer numbers, locations, etc.
I'm told all is set, I'd be getting an offer very very soon. Still great news.
The "getting an offer very soon" is repeated week after week, but there's always something that's delaying the process, or someone that we're waiting for.
So, I wait, and wait some more.
More than 2 months pass, always with regular contact with HR people, and still I'm told everything is being taken care of.

A different HR person takes over, and apparently he is clueless about who I am, how I got there, and basically doesn't know anything about what happened so far.
But after some weird phone conversations, the status is the same: "yeah, you'll have an offer in hand this week".
Then he calls me and says that the previous recruiter made some errors with my process, and they are rechecking everything.

Needless to say that I'm shocked by this, but what can I do... Apparently we're back on ground zero or something.
The recruiter didn't remember what we had discussed on the phone a week before, and asks me ridiculous questions like:
"Are you a new grad?" (I've graduated more than 12 years ago, as is obvious if he just had glanced over my CV);
"Did you interview at our office?" (excuse me?!)

This made me wonder, have they lost my file? Have they lost my interview scores? Do they know who I am? What happened?
I was almost in a panic, but still, we keep contact and I wait for some progress.
Again, the same old, "we're waiting for person X to do Y", and later "if you don't hear from me by day X contact me".
Day X comes. No feedback. I email the recruiter. No answer.
Two weeks pass. More emails. Still no answer.
Recruiter contacts me, and says they are still "trying to work on this".

Finally, after FIVE months of this, recruiter contacts me and says that they are NOT going forward with an offer.

This whole process was just a huge waste of time, made me lose other opportunities, and caused immense stress on me and my family (we would be moving to San Francisco from Europe, then suddenly we were left hanging on uncertainty for months).

Very very negative experience.

Interview Details – Applied online.
Received email from recruiter to set up phone screen.
Had phone screen with recruiter. At end of call she wanted to set up call with hiring manager as next step.
Received an email from recruiter to set up hiring manager call.
Had call with hiring manager. At end of call she wanted to set up next step, which was on-site interview with a number of team members.
Received email from recruiter to set up on-site interviews. Did not receive agenda until day before - I was about to email asking for it.
Had on site interview and met with 8 people. The peer group and upper management group was personable and down to earth. The middle management group was snobbish and impersonal - I would not want to work with them. They also did not ask good questions, They asked about current issues they are having and how I would solve for them, but they were not very articulate, i had to ask for clarification and even that did not work for them.

Interview Details – I got a phone call interview arranged by recruiter, who got my resume from an ex-intern friend of mine. I did not sign anything and wasn't told not to divulge the questions, so I assume I can comment on what they were.

First I had to solve a basic probability problem that turns into using Bayes rule. I'm terrible at solving combinatorial puzzles on the fly, but when the interviewer hinted the Bayes rule, I kind of successfully framed it as a posteriori calculation. I made a mistake when computing the denominator though.

Then I was given the following question: given a 2-column file with user codes and counts, retrieve the top-k users based on a score that is a function of the number of times they appear on the file and these counts. My solution didn't match what I assume to be the "answer key", so the interviewer started walking me through the idea, but I didn't get there.

No coding was asked for.

I don't have the outcome right now, but I expect to be negative. Maybe some other time.

Interview Details – Email invite for interview, followed by a phone interview with a TPM
(Did not make it past this round so I can't offer any additional information) I think it was more not being able to connect with this person over the phone then the Q&A.