Upthere, Inc interview questions

I was referred to Upthere through a former coworker of mine who works there. This was with the understanding that I had been out of the industry for a few years and so would come in as a more junior candidate needing a bit more ramp-up time to get up to speed. First, I had a lunch meeting with the VP in charge of the division, just to gauge my interest and where my skills were and how I best fit with the company's needs. I wanted a position to get my feet wet and back into coding, but something which might ultimately lead into an iOS developer position down the line. Upthere needed a build and test engineer, but the VP said she might be open to having me start there and moving later. It was a good conversation, and we definitely felt that we were a good match culturally for the company. That afternoon I met with the recruiter to go over what I might be expected of as a build engineer. He gave me a rundown of the newer technologies so I could go home and study them before the formal interview 10 days later. This was very helpful. The recruiter was very friendly, even a bit familiar, telling me about his work and methodology, and he had plenty of advice on how to make the most out of the job hunting process. He definitely had his opinions about this, and could come across a little strong for some people, but I appreciated his candor, even if I did not always feel that his way of doing things was compatible with my own goals. But he was very knowledgeable about the state of the industry and labor market and how best to work it. The actual tech interview was OK. I talked to a number of people, mostly developers on the team, some of them working on iOS/Android clients, some backend. The preparation I did on build technologies had been quite helpful. I was asked to do some whiteboard coding, which isn't my strong suit, but I came up with something that worked, though it used a naive algorithm. I felt that I did the best in the interview with the iOS engineer as I was most knowledgeable in that field, though unfortunately that's probably not the job I was primarily being evaluated for. In the end I didn't get the job as they said they really decided to go for someone with the knowledge and experience in build automation to add value right away. It worked out for the best, as the job was probably not the best fit for me anyway, and a month later I got a position that fit me much better. But it would be nice to know whether my difficulty in the whiteboard coding portion or any specific answers I gave significantly affected the outcome, and what I might be able to do to improve on that in the future if I need to do technical interviews.

I went onsite for an interview recently and had a great experience. I met with the recruiting manager and several members of the dev team. We had lunch on their amazing patio. The view is memorable.