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      Instrumental

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      Related searches: Instrumental reviews | Instrumental jobs | Instrumental salaries | Instrumental benefits
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      Software Engineer Interview

      Jul 30, 2024
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Instrumental

      Interview

      Clearly need interview training. The manager is not experienced enough. Random and unscripted questions. Tech stack is not something to be desired. When asked why is has continued to be that way, no adequate answer provided.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Balance project priorities among many product managers
      Answer question
      avatar
      Instrumental response
      1y
      Thank you for your feedback. We recognize there is always room for growth in how we engage with candidates and your input will help inform the interview training that we provide to our team. We’d also like to take this opportunity to provide some further context on our hiring philosophy and practices. Every role at Instrumental has a defined interview template – which is typically 8-12 pages long – detailing the competencies we’re looking for and the specific interview modules and questions we will ask each candidate. Many templates also include guidance on what kinds of signals we’re looking for in each question – and there is rigorous debate and iteration from team members during the process of the template construction. With that said, our team has made a deliberate decision to deliver early-stage interviews in a conversational style. We find this puts candidates at ease, enabling the interview to feel more like a “get-to-know-you” conversation in both directions. In regard to Instrumental’s technology stack, companies make technology decisions for a variety of reasons. We believe for engineering roles, it’s incredibly important for candidates to be able to ask questions and understand the technology stack we use to ensure it’s aligned with the candidate’s interests or developmental goals. In addition, all candidates have an opportunity at the end of each interview to ask clarification questions— including directly to our CTO & VP of Engineering in onsite stages for engineering positions.

      Other Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Instrumental

      Software Engineer Interview

      Apr 14, 2024
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Declined offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Instrumental in Mar 2024

      Interview

      The initial interviews with HR and the VP went smoothly and were handled professionally. However, the same cannot be said for their engineering team. During the interview the engineering team was unable to understand common programming patterns, semantics, and processes making it difficult to explain program flow and technology choices. The interviewer was very unprofessional, asking inappropriate questions and appearing to be very prejudice toward me. It was also odd that they gave a take home assignment demanding production ready code and documentation as if they were trying to exploit your time. Initial observations indicate the company may have an interesting product and potential, but their engineering team is weak, inexperienced, and very narrow minded with technology choices. After speaking to previous employees it seems they are having trouble moving forward with an incomplete product.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      They asked questions about the take home assigment.
      Answer question
      2
      avatar
      Instrumental response
      2y
      Thank you for your feedback. Instrumental takes all reports of prejudice and unprofessionalism very seriously and we have conducted an internal investigation. While the results of our investigation did not produce any information to substantiate these claims, we welcome any further feedback to be shared directly with people-team@instrumental.com. Regarding the coding assignment, Instrumental strongly believes in building an inclusive interview process. We believe that a work sample is one of the best indicators of performance and we also understand that not all candidates do their best work in a live coding environment. As such, all of our interviews include a module which can be completed asynchronously. Async modules are reviewed by our most senior engineers, all of whom have gone through the same rigorous interview process. Our product is mission-critical for our customers. Subsequently, Instrumental's engineering team has a high bar for deploying code into our production systems. We know that candidates are busy, so we've tried to design fundamentals-focused assignments that can be finished within 1-2 hours in place of a live coding interview, which many candidates have expressed a preference for. Since these assignments are focused on fundamentals, they are not useful for implementation in Instrumental’s product. Instrumental has never and will never use candidates' coding submissions in our product. If candidates have questions or concerns about this in their interview, there is dedicated time to ask questions or seek clarification.

      Software Engineer Interview

      Oct 24, 2019
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Palo Alto, CA
      Declined offer
      Positive experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Instrumental (Palo Alto, CA)

      Interview

      This was the best interview experience in my life! I got to talk to 13 people from the team, and all of them were very professional, smart, and friendly. I got to see a demo of the product which is incredibly innovative and revolutionary. I got to have conversations with the CEO and CTO and they were open and forthcoming about the company and its future. The whole interview experience felt very empathetic and respectful (which you cannot say about most tech interviews). And they even sent me a box of pastries with my offer letter. I almost cried when I accepted an offer from another company. That was probably a huge mistake, you should come work here.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      All questions were very relevant to the role.
      Answer question
      4