VMware Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took a week. I interviewed at VMware (Palo Alto, CA) in June 2013.

Interview

Applied for VMFS engineering team. Recruiter contacted online. Scheduled onsite interview. Total 6 face to face interviews including 1 with engineer in Bangalore. Lost some time in setting video conferencing with engineer in Bangalore. Asked questions about filesystem work, whiteboard coding questions, algorithms, system programming. All interviewers were helpful. Used to take picture of whiteboard at the end of interview.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at VMware (Palo Alto, CA) in April 2013.

Interview

I have been talking with these people for a while, even before graduating. Once I am graduating, they were fast to follow up (in fact, they are the fastest to do so). However they were not pushy or anything, which cannot be said about all the employers/HR out there.

The exact interview is quite fun, with interview questions being interleaved with chats about your work, their work and their short-term to mid-term focus. This gives you an idea of what you will get to work on and helps to have an informed decision. Again, many companies from my experience does not provide such information which makes a decision hard.

As for interview questions, expect some of the typical coding questions with some system design questions. The latter is probably due to my area of expertise. Be prepared. There is really nothing special about coding questions. Study for it.

Interview Questions

Reasons for Declining

I had a better offer from another company to do something I am personally more interested in.

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took a week. I interviewed at VMware (Seattle, WA) in October 2013.

Interview

I was contacted on LinkedIn by a recruiter about a private interview event in my city. The communication was pleasant and informative. I was asked to complete a timed (one hour) coding question online at my convenience. If the coding question went well, then I would be invited to participate at the interview event. I completed the coding question, and submitted my solution. A few days later I received word that they would be not be moving forward with me.

Interview Questions

Application

The process took 2+ weeks. I interviewed at VMware in February 2007.

Interview

The recruiter had a formal chat and then arranged 3 1:1 interview over phone. Even though all the interviews are fared well, there is no response from them. I sent a mail to one of the interviewers and he mentioned that the Manager is out of station and will give a call once she is back. But no response anymore.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at VMware (San Francisco, CA) in January 2007.

Interview

At the time I had my resume posted online; I was approached by VmWare and requested to interview with them by phone.

I agreed to take the interview and was informed that the interview would be related to C++ questions.

When the interview started, I was initially slightly taken aback at the brusque manner in which the interview proceeded; not unfriendly per-se, but there was hardly any preamble before the interviewer launched into his series of questions. I wasn't terribly put off by the manner, really; this was a screening interview, after all... however, as an experienced engineer with a steady capability to land the job I want, I now view interview processes as a 2-way street and expect the opportunity to ask at least a couple of questions.

The real issue I had with the interview was the content. Out of about 10 questions, not one related to C++, which was what I had been told; I don't care if an employer wants to keep the content of their interview secret, but to advise me of the content in advance, but then switch tack without warning is bad coordination at best, and sneaky at worst.

The actual questions asked were complex algorithm problems, not generic problem solvers, but very specific algorithmic-related scenarios, for which you pull a known algorighm out of the box and recite it; essentially a memory-test.

It became a bit ridiculous when the interviewer indicated that if I already knew the answer that I should tell him this and he would go to the next question.... So I was expected to, within seconds, over a phone, solve fairly complex problems that would normally take at least a couple of hours to review and solve from first principles.

It was basically a catch-22 situation; If I happened to know the answer , I wasn't supposed to give it, but if I didn't know the answer I was supposed to, at the drop of a hat, come up with the full solution.

It's a fairly standard process to present oblique problems to interviewees and see how they grapple with them; I do this myself when I am on the other side of the desk, but in a phone interview you simply don't have the time to work through hyper-complex problems that have specifically only one answer, and it is impossible for the interviewer to determine your collaborative capabailities; it becomes, essentially, a stress-test.

Anyways, in the end I muddled through the problems; for the algorithms I didn't know I did pretty well, I think. In fact I pulled some decent solutions out on short notice. I didn't care if they called back, I wasn't going to accept any job there; I knew I would end up working with the interviewer and, to be frank, I don't work well with people who are inflexible in their thinking. They did call back about a year later indicating that they were interested in talking to me again. At this point I had landed a great position at a different company and was still a bit annoyed so I declined.

In conclusion, for this particular group, and perhaps only this person in question, it appeared that they were filtering out people who didn't have robot-savant type quailities. This might not reflect the culture as whole, but it certainly turned me off this place.

The lack of a follow-up email after the interview was not very kosher, either... I didn't hear from them again until they were on a different recruiting drive.

Interview Questions

Application

The process took 5 days. I interviewed at VMware (Palo Alto, CA) in January 2008.

Interview

They turned me down. Interviewers were highly condescending, and looking for specific answers. After they declined me, I got offers from Microsoft and Google, with a good salary / stock combo at each.
They should learn to treat interviewees with respect, and train their interviewers to judge better.
Based on interviewer's attitude, I wouldnt wanna work there anyways, even if they offered me a better salary.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at VMware (Palo Alto, CA) in January 2011.

Interview

Initial communication consisted of discussions with a recruiter followed by a phone screen with the hiring manger. Interview was all-day at the VMware campus in Palo Alto. It consisted of one-on-one meetings with a number of engineers of various ranks from within the group, as well as the hiring manager and another group manager. The interviews focused on programming questions, but there were also systems design questions. Recruiter followed up in a couple of days following meeting with the interview team.

Interview Questions

Application

The process took 3+ months. I interviewed at VMware (Palo Alto, CA) in July 2011.

Interview

Terrible process. Although they were nice enough to accommodate some of my scheduling issues, it was handled awfully. For example, after two phone screen interviews in mid-April that they were flying me out for an onsite interview, but due to significant screw-ups on their part (and a 3 week period when I was on vacation), it didn't happen till mid-July.

The interview scheduling itself was quite awful. Thrice, they asked me for dates that I could fly to California. Twice, those dates went by without any contact from them (even though I told them I had another offer, and they assured me they would hurry up). The third time, they emailed me the morning before and said I was going to be booked on a flight the next day! And then after I reminded them at 9 PM that night that I still didn't have tickets for my flight the next morning, they sent them to me about half an hour before midnight. I blame this, in part, for not having enough time to prepare.

The interview itself was OK, although I don't think I did well enough to get an offer. One interviewer was openly hostile towards me because he saw my major on my resume and immediately assumed that I was not qualified (He actually said the words "Your major is XXX. Why have you even applied for THIS job?"). They assured me a result very quickly, within a day or two, since I had to tell the other company that made me an offer to wait. It's been 3 days now, and no reply. I've pretty much given up hope; even if they do make me an offer, I'm not sure I want to work here

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through other source. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at VMware (Palo Alto, CA) in July 2011.

Interview

- Recruiter screening (Week 1)
- Phone interview screen by hiring manager (Week 2)
- Phone interview screen by Senior Engineer - Technical Round (Week 3)
- In person interview with 10 people (Week 4)
- Salary and package negotiation (Week 5)

Signed NDA. Can't talk about the questions and other details

Interview Questions

Reasons for Declining

Multiple offers. Decided to go with a company where I got a great package.

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at VMware (Cambridge, MA) in June 2011.

Interview

2 rounds of telephonic
1 round online
Onsite 1:1

Interview Questions