Grubhub Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Grubhub (Chicago, IL) in April 2017.

Interview

The interview process moved quickly, which I liked.

It was thorough, but not belabored.

I felt like my expectations were set appropriately. I always knew where I was in the process and what to expect at each stage.

Video conference interviewing is a bit inconvenient. I had to WFH for an entire day just to do a 30 min. video interview. I guess it's different for everyone, but just going into the Grubhub office for a face-to-face would've been more convenient and effective than video.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Grubhub (Chicago, IL) in March 2015.

Interview

A phone interview with a manager and a fellow engineer. Both went well but took a few weeks to set up because one interviewer failed to call at the scheduled time (he says he forgot to check Outlook that day). The next interview was to be with the VP of Engineering over Skype and using a shared document but the recruiter wanted to schedule it during business hours. I balked at that because the only way I'd be capable of doing that would be to find a conference room somewhere and use my current employers network to interview for a different company. Seems sketchy to me. The recruiter then told me that they'd just bring me in for a full set of interviews. I gave my availability for more than a week out but didn't hear from the recruiter until two days before the full set of interviews that the interviews were scheduled. That's not enough notice.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Grubhub (New York, NY) in March 2015.

Interview

was ok, they asked basic questions that you would find in your data structures and algorithms class. if you prepare and know your algorithms well then you will be fine, no sweat. also they start off with basic phone screening, with really basic questions of code, so you'll be fine

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Grubhub.

Interview

Made me an offer through Hired.com, then had a phone interview with a nice guy who asked about my experience and asked relevant technical questions to gauge my understanding of the Angular framework. Went well. Got an in-person interview a few days later.

.......which is where it went downhill.

As with other candidates on here, I was placed in an empty room and left there on my own for 15 minutes. So that was nice.

Then, two fellows came in, asked me a single question "What is your experience with X?", listened to my brief response without comment, then said "OK" and launched straight into a pretty ridiculous technical interview.

They had me implement Conway's Game of Life from a skeleton of code, which is a bit tricky even if you've done it before. If you haven't done it, then let me assure you figuring out how to do it with a guy literally sitting on each side of you looking over your shoulder and pointing out your mistakes is NOT the ideal way to start, especially when they've both already shown themselves to be highly robotic and unsociable interviewers.

I got most of it, but got stuck on one point and knew I wasn't going to get past it in that context, and it was crystal clear that was enough to sink the interview. I had already stopped caring....their impression was so overwhelmingly negative that I had lost all interest pretty fast. Didn't need the job quite that badly.

Did I mention they didn't even book a room for the whole interview, so in the middle of implementing the Game of Life someone came knocking and opened the door and asked for the room? But that's cool, everyone knows distractions like that shouldn't make a difference to a GOOD engineer.

Summary: mechanical interviewers and inconsiderate treatment topped off by my value being judged entirely on one very poorly set-up and poorly evaluated technical exercise, zero actual conversation or discussion of my experience, strengths, or interests.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Grubhub in March 2015.

Interview

Applied online through their website and received a call from the recruiter to go over my resume and experience. this went well, and they sent me an online coding problem. I wrote a correct solution to the problem they gave, but it could have had a decent improvement on space usage.

After 8 days I emailed the recruiter to see if there was any movement in the interview process. I didn't receive a response so I emailed again 11 days later. It is now 7 days after that email and still no response as to whether or not I am still a candidate for the position. Very unprofessional and disappointing that I still have not received any update from the company.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Grubhub (New York, NY) in January 2015.

Interview

1. Phone screen

2. In Person Interview

First interviewer was the technology director. She asked a design question for a dispatch system for a delivery system. THe question was pretty open ended so it was hard to guage what she was looking for. Either way she was polite and professional.

Second interviewer was a software engineer. He peppered me with questions about details about Java and the Android platform. Nothing deep - either i remembered the answer or i didn't.

Third Interviewer was an engineer. He asked for an implementation of autocomplete on a phone keypad. The question wasn't difficult but the engineer was a complete jerk and carried an awful attitude. He would jump all over me as your wrote out my solution on the board, without giving me a moment to step and think/debug/edit.

Fourth interviewer was a project manager. she asked me a bunch of generic "what if" scenario questions.

3. Followup

2 days after the in person they sent me a programming assignment and asked me to complete it by end of week. The assignment was vague and lacking in deais. Upon completion it took them 2 MORE weeks of several emails from me to get them to decide to not move forward.

Thoughts:

Terrible experience. First of all, that power tripping engineer asking questions had no idea what he was doing. Secondly, the way they dragged it out for 3 extra weeks was completely unnecessary. I'm pretty sure they didn't read my code and needlessy just made me jump through a hoop. The HR admin wasn't on top of things. I had to reach out several time for status.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Grubhub (Chicago, IL) in June 2015.

Interview

First phone screen was with HR, gauging my interest. Second phone screen was with Senior Dir describing GrubHub, its teams, locations, business model. I asked some business-model questions and offered some innovation business ideas which he found interesting but not implemented yet. Asked me if I have any questions before moving to technical peer-programming over the web.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Grubhub (Chicago, IL) in June 2015.

Interview

A full afternoon, broken into four parts.

1. general discussion of the position with a team lead
2. coding exercise -- they bring in a laptop and have you flesh out a skeleton project
3. OO design exercise -- how would you design a ___?
4. more senior manager

Heavy emphasis on programming in Java. They really want someone who programs in it day to day and it looks like you really get dinged for small mistakes even if you are coding on a whiteboard or on paper.

In my case, it seems one issue was that I was not assertive enough in defending my design / coding decisions. They're really looking for someone who can work quickly and stand behind that work.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Grubhub (Chicago, IL) in February 2016.

Interview

Overall, it was a great interview process, very quick and the tech recruiter was very responsive.

First started with a talk with a tech recruiter, then moved onto a 1 on 1 online interview which lasted around 45 minutes. Then 1-2 weeks later, I moved on to an on-site interview, which took about 2 hours. I met with two different lead developers for white boarding and they asked fairly difficult questions. I got my offer 1-2 days after the on-site interview.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Grubhub (New York, NY) in October 2017.

Interview

I came in for a half-day onsite interview in the NY office after a pretty easy Technical Phone Screen.

The NY office is cramped, relatively small, and not lit very well. Their HQ is in Chicago, so that is where all the best talent and office space is. By comparison, the NY office feels like a startup in a shabby sort of way. There was a small game room with a Wii. A significant portion of their tech talent is contracted to individuals outside the country (prob. to save money) including ones in Eastern Europe, so just keep that in mind. If hired, you might be video conferencing with colleagues that don't speak English well.

I didn't see a very strong or mature engineering culture there. Sometimes you can walk into a place and sense immediately that they have it together. This place does not exude that feeling.

First interview was with a Teach lead. He was a nice guy. The problem was to architect a UI on the Grubhub site.

Second interview was with a pompous engineer who made me not want to work there. He put his feet on the table and kinda smirked and sneered as I worked through a problem to write a setTimeout function and a debouncer function.

Third interview was with two guys who were foreigners that spoke non-fluent English and had trouble explaining the problem, so it was difficult to work through a solution while they kept adding more constraints because they explained the problem vaguely in the beginning.

Overall, I would only look at this company if you can't find a better job elsewhere.

Interview Questions