VMware Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Jan 2007 in San Francisco, CA (took a day)

At the time I had my resume posted online; I was approached by VmWare and requested to interview with them by phone.

I agreed to take the interview and was informed that the interview would be related to C++ questions.

When the interview started, I was initially slightly taken aback at the brusque manner in which the interview proceeded; not unfriendly per-se, but there was hardly any preamble before the interviewer launched into his series of questions. I wasn't terribly put off by the manner, really; this was a screening interview, after all... however, as an experienced engineer with a steady capability to land the job I want, I now view interview processes as a 2-way street and expect the opportunity to ask at least a couple of questions.

The real issue I had with the interview was the content. Out of about 10 questions, not one related to C++, which was what I had been told; I don't care if an employer wants to keep the content of their interview secret, but to advise me of the content in advance, but then switch tack without warning is bad coordination at best, and sneaky at worst.

The actual questions asked were complex algorithm problems, not generic problem solvers, but very specific algorithmic-related scenarios, for which you pull a known algorighm out of the box and recite it; essentially a memory-test.

It became a bit ridiculous when the interviewer indicated that if I already knew the answer that I should tell him this and he would go to the next question.... So I was expected to, within seconds, over a phone, solve fairly complex problems that would normally take at least a couple of hours to review and solve from first principles.

It was basically a catch-22 situation; If I happened to know the answer , I wasn't supposed to give it, but if I didn't know the answer I was supposed to, at the drop of a hat, come up with the full solution.

It's a fairly standard process to present oblique problems to interviewees and see how they grapple with them; I do this myself when I am on the other side of the desk, but in a phone interview you simply don't have the time to work through hyper-complex problems that have specifically only one answer, and it is impossible for the interviewer to determine your collaborative capabailities; it becomes, essentially, a stress-test.

Anyways, in the end I muddled through the problems; for the algorithms I didn't know I did pretty well, I think. In fact I pulled some decent solutions out on short notice. I didn't care if they called back, I wasn't going to accept any job there; I knew I would end up working with the interviewer and, to be frank, I don't work well with people who are inflexible in their thinking. They did call back about a year later indicating that they were interested in talking to me again. At this point I had landed a great position at a different company and was still a bit annoyed so I declined.

In conclusion, for this particular group, and perhaps only this person in question, it appeared that they were filtering out people who didn't have robot-savant type quailities. This might not reflect the culture as whole, but it certainly turned me off this place.

The lack of a follow-up email after the interview was not very kosher, either... I didn't hear from them again until they were on a different recruiting drive.