HOVER

HOVER Interviews

1. Apr 9, 2022

   Software Engineer Interview

   Anonymous Employee in San Francisco, CA

   No Offer

   Negative Experience

   Average Interview

   Application

   I applied online. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at HOVER (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2022

   Interview

   Lengthy, confusing, felt rushed yet too long, and chaotic with varying quality. Entire process took over 8 hours across a period of 2 months.
   1) call with recruiter (30 minutes).
   2) 1st hiring manager discussion (1 hour), on another day, the first technical test (1 hour).
   3) 1-hour scheduling call
   Then, if interested in you, they invite you to a 6-hour series of interviews arranged as a "virtual on-site" which included:
   a) another 1-hour coder test: they give you 45 minutes (minus about 10 minutes of hi, hello, question setup) and 15 minutes at the end is used to "let you ask questions" in the end about the job, which the person giving the test knows little about since they may not be on your team
   b) another call with hiring manager. this was supposed to be a wrap up call but it took place in the middle
   c) 1-hour meeting on HOVER's "values", smooshed in with a "behavioral assessment"
   d) 1-hour on "product", which discussed the relationships of the three tiers: product, engineering, design and how they are "separate" but "brought together" and "collaborative"
   e) 1-hour "whiteboarding" - this one seemed to deal with "data abstraction", and for about 45 minutes you go over and over on topics related to data in an abstract way, but this probably is entirely different for the next person
   f) 1-hour presentation called a "Technical Walkthrough" where a panel of 6 people from various teams is present for you to give an "interactive presentation" you make in Google Slides on a technical topic of your choice. (Some of the questions during QA seemed "pre-arranged" because the person who asked one of the questions seemed to be asking something off a piece of paper right after the very question he asked was answered during the previous question. It showed some of the panel weren't really paying attention.)
   
   Recruiter points you to their Candidate Site, which I did read over (and watched the videos) and tried to do what they said, but it made little difference in the outcome.
   
   You could tell many were using the interviews partly as downtime, or were otherwise busy and didn't have time to really take the time. No matter how friendly I was, the questions were awkward and it was the normal developer culture which didn't seem very different than other places.
   
   Lengthy delays getting back to me in the middle were probably a sign it wasn't going to work out, so why did they waste all of those hours of my time in the last days of the process? I spent over 3 hours preparing the presentation slides and practicing all of the talking points, for a 45 minute presentation. This seemed to go the best of all of the interviews, other than the initial call with the hiring manager 2 months ago, but I could be wrong.
   
   Lots of repetition. You asked yourself, "Do I repeat the same story, or do I tell a different one?"
   
   In retrospect, I ask myself "Did I rub someone the wrong way?" I could tell at least two people didn't like me from the jump, but they weren't the hiring mangers.
   
   They should radically shrink this process to 1 test and 1 hiring manager interview, and then perhaps a panel presentation. I do not see the point in having all of these redundancies. "Values": there's onboarding for that.
   
   Asked for feedback after: got 0 response after the rejection note sent 48 hours later at a time of day when I knew "Boomerang" sent it
   

   Interview

   2 1-Hour-long coder tests with 2D geometry questions "in the language of your choice", but C++ or Javascript encouraged.

   1 Answers