I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Netflix (Los Gatos, CA) in Mar 2018
Interview
I was interviewed for Netflix for a Senior Software Engineer position in Los Gatos, California. The First round was with the recruiter, basic behavioral questions. Recruiter has really good technical knowledge and was able to answer most of my project related questions. Setup a call with the hiring manager in a week. Hiring Manager round was technical too. Lasted for 40 minutes (the manager joined 10 minutes late). Basic questions about background, interest in the role, project description. I received a take-home project to be written in any JVM based programming language you like.
I was able to complete the task in 4 hours and sent it. I did not attach the driver program to execute the code, however, I attached some test cases and a ReadMe file.
The manager has set up a code review session after a couple of days and rejected me in the next four minutes for not having a proper package structure for Src and Test files and for not having a driver file. Not a single line of code was reviewed.
It is sad that I was rejected because of not having a proper package structure. In any other company, people only care about the logic and not the ceremonies of the code. I was disappointed with this interview process.
Always the driver script/program and follow the package structure. Time does not matter.
Seeing the URL shortening service design question caught me off guard at first, but it turned out to be a lucky moment. Just a few days prior, I had practiced a similar architecture problem on PracHub, so I felt somewhat prepared to tackle scalability and data consistency aspects. The process included a recruiter screen, followed by a technical interview focused on system design. Overall, the questions were manageable, but I didn't end up receiving an offer, which was disappointing. The experience taught me a lot, though.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a URL shortening service (similar to bit.ly). What components would you include in your architecture, and how would you handle scalability and data consistency?
The Netflix interview loop is intense and lives up to its reputation. The recruiters are great, but the technical bar is absolute top tier. After a technical phone screen, the virtual onsite consisted of two deep system design rounds, a practical coding round, and very heavy behavioral rounds focused purely on their Culture Memo. They do not care about how many LeetCode hards you have memorized. They care about how you reason through scale, failure, and ambiguity.
Recruiter screen high level discussion.
Tech phone screen live programming exercise.
Virtual onsite, 3 tech rounds two culture/behavioral.
For mine it was like an out-of-body experience, except when I turned to look it wasn't a body at all; it was a plane. Watched it take off, seemed like maybe the pilot hit the throttle a little hard trying to reach cruising altitude and then.. dunno, maybe he dropped his cigarette under the seat or there was a bee in the cockpit or something because next thing you know he's flailing around while I watch the plane tumbling, helplessly aghast as a wing shears off from the stresses he's inducing. No survivors.
But seriously, good interview process. Very helpful recruiter team that will spend time detailing the process and expectations. Exercises are very realistic applied engineering stuff, not brain teasers or obscure algorithms or stuff you haven't done since college. Interview process may be different across the org so YMMV. I interviewed with the Content and Business Products side of the house (i.e., tools for studio, production, not streaming to end users) and the coding, sys design, and data modeling rounds all reflected that.
My advice to you: study the OSS software they publish, know your stuff and *stay calm*.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a time when you had conflict with someone outside your group