Yahoo Web Developer Interview

Interviewed Oct 2007 in Santa Clara, CA (took a day)

I had a phone interview with a Yahoo! technical recruiter, and then an in-person interview at the Yahoo! facility with five individuals, most of whom were other developers on the technical team with the vacancy.

The phone interview was very standard, and comfortable for me because it was like so many others I've had. It was exactly as general as these tend to be.

The in-person interview involved my traveling to the Yahoo! building in Santa Clara, where I passed through the working area to a meeting room. I was really disappointed to see that some of my favorite Web innovations are engineered in such a run-of-the-mill cube farm, lit from overhead by horrible, glaring fluorescent lights; I'd expected something with more consideration for the comfort of the techs.

The people who interviewed me were diverse in nationality and gender, which impressed me. None seemed to be older than thirty, and only one seemed to be very poised or experienced in the task of interviewing a job candidate.

Indeed, the worst interviewer was the team lead, who had a list of printed questions he hesitated to discard. At one point I was, to be honest, failing to answer the technical question he'd posed; eventually, I answered, "I don't know," and paused. His response was to ask the exact same question, using the exact same wording, again. I don't remember what I said at this point, but I remember thinking, "I would so entirely hate working for this man." I guess the purpose of the interview--finding out whether company and candidate are a good match--was satisfied at this point.