I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at 500friends in Nov 2015
Interview
The interview process went very smoothly and my recruiter is super responsive and considerate through out the process. I probably applied during a busy season (It's a month leading to Christmas) so the process took longer than expected since the engineers are super busy.
Started with a code challenge which I really took time to polish and be creative about. After my challenge was approved I had a pair coding session with one of the senior engineers. My interviewer was very friendly, we talked about my story, the challenge that I did. The coding questions later on are pretty straight forward as well.
Unfortunately I already accepted a different offer from another company during this time so for now I will not be able to join 500friends. I am definitely looking to reconnect in the future though!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Go through the code challenge, asked about many different other scenarios and how you can improve your current code to meet new requirements. Then there were data structure questions - but pretty straight forward.