The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Cherwell Software (Colorado Springs, CO) in Mar 2016
Interview
There were a few preliminary phone calls. The hiring manager was one of the callers. The HR contact was decent but he was dry and terse ... at the interview he was worse. Much worse.
His main question - “imagine all our engineers and testers were on busses on a trip. You were stuck on the bus with the testers. But the bus with the developers crashes. There are no survivors! Then a customer calls with an urgent bug that must be fixed right away. How do you identify the source of the bug and fix it?!”
Me - errr there is a much bigger problem here. I would kindly let the customer know that we had a terrible accident. They would understand and the urgency level would find its rightful place. Then after calling all the employees families and finding out how to support them and going to weeks of funerals, I would start addressing the software issues.
His response was that I was going about his question all wrong.
Eventually he right out said! “The answer is to use Fiddler to find the problem. Have you ever heard of Fiddler!?”
*sigh*
Any manager who says that developers are “stuck” with testers doesn’t understand the relationship and bonds we share, and he shows a prejudice and an artificial pecking order.
Also, his lack of quality for life itself was appalling. From what I’ve heard from former employees, it’s a part of Cherwell’s “culture”.
My advice: don’t ride either of the busses they have to offer. Either you will be “stuck” or “dead”.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
imagine all our engineers and testers were on busses on a trip. You were stuck on the bus with the testers. But the bus with the developers crashes. There are no survivors! Then a customer calls with an urgent bug that must be fixed right away. How do you identify the source of the bug and fix it?!
Thank you for the feedback! We have done a lot of work on our interviewing process since 2016 and we no longer ask these types of questions. We have turned our focus to reviewing actual code samples and using that as a discussion in our interview process. All Engineering candidates are given a coding "take home test" they submit for review (no whiteboard coding during the interview). We still include a cultural interview to ensure that someone will work well within our teams once they have demonstrated the coding experience.
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Cherwell Software (Dundee, Scotland) in Aug 2018
Interview
First interview was a personal interview, covering my career history and past experiences. Second interview was a technical interview, with a week to implement a solution in .NET before submitting and discussing my solution at the technical interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you tell us about a feature that you have previously implemented in another role and what you did from conception to delivery?