Fan TV interview questions

Had a 10 minute phone screen where I was given an assignment to be completed through Ruby on Rails. It was a basic web app that didn't require much Rails experience at all, but more CSS and HTML. A couple weeks later I was given a 4-hour technical interview in their San Mateo office.

I recently did interviews on-site at Fanhattan, a company that aggregates a number of different media delivery methods. Their office is located about a ten minute walk away from the San Mateo Caltrain station which, depending on which train you catch, can be a relatively quick "Baby Bullet" train ride from San Jose or San Francisco. When I walked in around noon, everyone was enjoying a catered lunch (and I forgot to ask if catered lunch is a daily or regular occurrence). You'll see plenty of movie props sitting around the office, and the work environment looked like the typical "open plan" of long desks with slightly personalized areas that you might find in a number of Silicon Valley start-ups. It didn't look like there was much room in there for the company to be able to add additional people. The role I was interviewing for was as a Mobile Engineer, and when I stepped in I first got to speak with the UX / UI person who was very passionate about her role and seemed to be someone who appreciates having interface & experience ideas bounced off of. I then got to speak with the two iOS focused engineers, both ex-Apple employees, and their line of questioning basically interrogated me about my UI knowledge (e.g. describe the architecture of a sliding UISwitch, the various layers of it and how this might be implemented in the code behind the scenes). They didn't seem to care very much for the underlying protocols or plumbing of the app, focusing more on the user experience (the space that Fanhattan lives in is pretty competitive and therefore they are pretty picky about having a distinctive user interface). If you're going onsite, it will definitely be useful to be very familiar with the Fanhattan app and/or website and their offerings. And after I left, I later found out that they turned me down because they felt I was too arrogant or assertive to be a good potential co-worker. This was a great bummer, since I felt like I had to show I could have strong opinions and stand independently of the two ex-Apple employees, but hopefully my experience flunking my Fanhattan interview will help you to pass yours. If my interview notes helped you out, please let me know by voting "yes" on the "Helpful?" question below.