Thought Machine Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in April 2018.

Interview

The process begins with a social gathering and presentation. This is primarily to gauge the potential for team fit. Candidates are expected to be social and interact with team members. Ask sensible questions and relate the challenges of the job to their previous work experience.

Candidates who make a good impression will be asked to complete an offline assignment, which will be graded for style, correctness to specification and performance.

Candidates whose assignment scores highly will be asked to return one more time, for a series of technical interviews. These usually comprise an algorithmic assignment (against a white-board), a programming challenge (which might be a code-review and change of what was submitted) and finally a team-fit interview with a member of the management team.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in August 2018.

Interview

I have never applied for this role, in fact, I have been invited by the internal recruiter to this sort of social event where you can meet with the team, have a general chat and attend the company presentation given by the CEO. At first I thought it was a quite interesting format, albeit a bit unusual, but I decided to accept the invite, also because I was mildly interested in their technology.

The day before the social event I made a little research on the company and the second result on a very popular search engine using the company name as a keyword, was an article that stated that the company went into administration not too long ago and, on the day the article was written, they had signed no clients yet. Needless to say I got a bit suspicious but I decided to attend the event all the same.

I got to the event where I was greeted by one of the employees, who gave me a badge with my name printed on it and also took a picture of me. I asked but the purpose of the picture was but I didn't get a clear answer.

I then started chatting with the current engineers. I have to say they were all very nice guys, happy to answer all my questions about their tech stack. Although, not sure if it was only a coincidence, but pretty much all of them had been at the company for at most one year. Most of them two or three months.

Then the CEO gave us the company presentation. He talked about his past experiences with other companies, why he decided to start Thought Machine etc. He seems to have a lot experience in this field and I'm sure he possesses many qualities but charisma is definitely not one of them. I would go as far as saying that it was one of least engaging public speeches I have ever attended.

He has been challenged about the administration subject by one of the guys that attended the meeting and replied saying that it was fabricated news. I am not sure what the current situation is at present but this information is publicly available on The London Gazzette and is dated January 2018.

He then went on saying how they're growing bigger and bigger every day, even though they haven't gone live yet and it's not clear how many clients they have signed. All of this with a not so confident voice tone. I have never been to a multi-level marketing meeting, but I somehow immagine it would be a similar experience.

After the speech I hanged out a bit more with the engineers and finally met some more senior people (two years at the company). Again, all of them were very nice and it was interesting exchanging views on programming language paradigms with them. Although I didn't get the feeling that they had strong Python knowledge, which is supposed to be the core language they use. I started talking about concurrent programming in Python with one of the senior engineers, specifically asyncio and he thought I was talking about a web framework.

The day after the interview/social event I received an email quite early in the morning saying that they did not intend to take my application further as they thought my past experience were not very relevant.

No big deal at all as I am not brave enough to leave a permanent position for a company that is (or at least has been not too long ago) in administration and a CEO that doesn't come across as a very convincing person, although I found it quite bizarre because:

a. I haven't been asked any specific question during the interview/meeting.
I made it very clear what my background was beforehand but I have still been invited to the event.
b. I haven't even been tested on programming skills or asked specific question related to the position (back-end engineer)

I can only assume they evaluate people just going by their gut feelings.

TL;DR
Sounds like an interesting company at first. People seem quite nice. Not reassuring news on the web about the company (went into administration on January 2018) and it's not clear whether they have gone live yet or not or if they have any clients at all. Questionable ways of evaluating people

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)).

Interview

Chat over the phone - Socialising event - Take home test - Face to face interview. It takes up a lot of your time and is quite disappointing if you don't get an offer in the end. There's a fair amount of chutzpah and during the initial meet, they keep mentioning that they are "ex-googlers" which just comes across as tacky. The developers, QA and the rest of the team are actually very nice and you can carry a conversation with them. But I think leadership is lacking.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took a week. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in June 2018.

Interview

Thought Machine invites you to attend a social event as the first stage interview. However, this is nothing but a marketing gimmick. Please do not attend if you do not want to feel you have been cheated. They do not call back or provide any feedback after the event. Desperate to save the company from going bankrupt as they are in administration currently.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in July 2015.

Interview

The first stage is a social event in which the CEO gives a talk about the company and you have a chance to meet the staff and ask questions. I thought it was a nice way to see if Thought Machine is a good fit for me without any pressure or having to do any preparation. After that I expressed an interest and was asked to do a short homework mini-project (you have 48 hours at a time suited to you) and then attend an on-site. I had three interviews on site, each about 30-45 minutes. Everyone I met was very friendly and seemed keen that I succeed. It was a good experience!

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in April 2017.

Interview

Thought Machine have an interesting process where they invite all applicants to a social evening where beer plays a prominent role. This provides the slightly awkward situation where you are chatting with a mix of team members, leadership team and rival applicants. It makes it a bit like Big Brother..

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in September 2018.

Interview

1. Informal culture fit post work social session. Turn up and mingle with staff over drinks. Listen to a talk from the CEO. Ask questions.

2. If you pass the culture fit test, you’ll be invited to do a test. I was given some requirements for a board game and told to implement the game and create ‘production ready’ code.

3. If you pass the coding challenge, you’ll be invited back for an interview which consists of three parts: Code review, algorithms and finally system design.

Smooth interview process, I was expecting an offer but did really badly in the basic algorithms part of the in person interview which was my downfall (which was extremely frustrating as it was bread and butter stuff). Make sure you revisit your basic algorithms before the interview!

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in April 2018.

Interview

The process at Thought Machine begins, uniquely, with a cultural test - essentially a drinks & mingling session with some current developers and other applicants, with a talk with the CEO halfway through.

They then decide if you would fit in culturally there before sending you a 48 hour coding challenge. If they like your solution, you are then brought in for 3 final back-to-back interviews with their engineers - a reivew of your code; an algorithm task; and depending on your experience, either another algorithm task or a system design task.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Thought Machine (London, England (UK)) in June 2016.

Interview

The process consisted of three stages.

The first was an informal event where the CEO gave an overview of the company and took questions. At the event, prospective candidates as well as current employees attended and mingled. I thought this was a brilliant idea since personally I find the environment and the people one of the most important aspects of any job. This allows the candidates to have a first-hand insight into this and talk to the employees and find out what working at Thought Machine is really like, as opposed to just reading company snippets online and chatting to recruiters. Everyone seemed sociable and smart which encouraged me to pursue the application further.

The second stage was a take-home coding task which took several hours to complete, but I was given 48 hours to complete it at the time I found convenient. I found the problem quite fun to solve. The task was then reviewed by Thought Machine engineers and I was invited for the final stage.

The last stage consisted of three on-site interviews. All were technical interviews with Thought Machine engineers. The questions were challenging, but everyone seemed friendly and welcoming and I enjoyed the process. I received my offer a couple days after the final interview.

Interview Questions

Application

I interviewed at Thought Machine in May 2019.

Interview

Phone screen, social event where everyone was surprisingly nice, just a relaxed drinks evening where the employees made an effort to get to know you and seemed to genuinely enjoy being at the company.

A technical task that is tough for a less experienced engineer.

In-person: 3 hours with no real breaks, for me spread over lunch time so I was pretty tired/unfocused by the last one.

Everyone was very nice, warm and encouraging, especially the HR contact.

The last interview included a guy who sighed audibly while I was thinking through a whiteboard problem, incorrectly interrupted me (he didn't seem to know JavaScript very well) and then fell into disagreement with his colleague. His colleague was very nice but also patronising in the way he posed questions. Both went on their phones during the interview.

Other than the last interview it was a positive experience with feedback afterwards.

Interview Questions