I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Verkada (San Mateo, CA) in Mar 2020
Interview
The interview was a 1hr video conference meeting with a coding exercise. Heads up to anyone who interviews here, take control of the situation as best you can. Interviewer came on and we engaged in some small talk. After about 10 minutes a coding sample was presented on one of the programming sites. There was no established duration for the exercise - if this happens simply ask them how long you have. It could be, as is often the case in programming, you kick it around for 5 or 10 minutes then some clarity kicks in for a best/better solution. Interviewer continued to talk to me which served no obvious purpose - this was not a design question but a coding exercise without a lot of grey area. If this happens to you maybe just politely tell them you have the gist of the problem and do your best without too much conversation. Lastly there was a lot of extraneous noise (rather not say exactly what) on the call with notifications going off the whole time and the interviewer seemed to be looking over his shoulder constantly. Not much you can do about this, maybe mute them to eliminate the noise. I don't think the interviewer was a bad guy, he might have even liked it if I'd made some assertive requests. Oh well live and learn, came up with a lukewarm solution that was functional but not the good solution.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There was some amount of conversation about my background but nothing significant beyond the coding exercise.
I got the interview by referral. After a call with the recruiter, I got the invitation for phone interview, which is a OOD. I need to implement APIs based on the requirements with Python.
The interviewer arrived late exactly by 9 mins, I was informed that the interview format was one leet code coding, a small system design and some questions towards the end. So in the interview I worked on the problem and came up with the working solution. Still 12 minutes were remaining for 1 hour mark and also 9 more minutes as the interviewer was late by 9 mins (almost 21 mins remaining). The interviewer instead of asking the system design question abruptly ended the interview with "ask any questions". I understand the interviewer may have different expectation even if i provided a working solution, but the format of the interview should be respected, i.e including system design round too. Abruptly changing the interview format midway shows pure arrogance on part of the interviewer. I understand the decision to take the candidate to future interview rounds or making and offer is totally yours, but you can do a better job by making the interview process fair.
4 parts - a call with a recruiter, a frontend technical interview (eg; building out a UI in a timed session), Leetcode style interview, and a behavioral interview with the engineering manager.
