I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at SIMON Markets (San Francisco, CA) in Jan 2022
Interview
This was the most bizarre interview process I've been through.
Applied online and immediately got a phone call from them to set up an interview. Like, within 3 minutes of applying. Then had a technical screen that was half coding, half just chatting, extremely casual. Then like 2 weeks later, they asked me to do the same technical screen with a different person, which was weird. Then got a call for an onsite, which was 4 interviews, 2 system design??, a coding challenge, and a 30 minute behavioral.
Most of the coding questions were extremely easy. The system design was pretty standard so if you practice those at all you're fine.
It was bizarre bc after each interview, a week or two would go by without me hearing anything, so i kept thinking i was getting ghosted, but then they'd randomly call me and be like "hey are you free to interview tomorrow?" I also had no idea what the next steps were at any point in the process, just waited for the phone calls.
They also never emailed me anything, it was all phone call based, so you better write down what they tell you. I didn't write down the structure of the last interview and went into each one having no idea what was gonna happen lol, but that was kinda my bad bc I could've emailed and asked, they were super responsive over email. I just wasn't that invested.
Then, each interview was super casual, which was cool I guess, but they also would just chat for a really long time and then leave like 15 minutes to code and just be like "I don't even care if we finish this honestly" Most of them had brogrammer energy, used a looot of corporate lingo to explain stuff. They were super friendly and chill though, really easy to talk to.
But yeah, I kinda got the vibe that I wasn't their first choice so they kept calling me as a last resort after other people didn't work out. Either that or they're just extremely unstructured. Very weird process. I didn't hate it tho. I can see someone else loving it.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at SIMON Markets in Feb 2022
Interview
Standard recruiter screen, online coding challenge, phone screen, and onsite with many rounds of interviews including coding, behavioral, and hiring manager. Nothing unexpected, and although interviews were way too short, the questions were extremely simple. Every interviewer asked the exact same thing and didn't bother reading resume or previous interview notes. I was told I would receive feedback regardless of the decision only to get a standard rejection email several weeks afterwards and a ghosting.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Simple coding questions such as LC easy and one medium. No architecture or system design whatsoever.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at SIMON Markets (New York, NY) in Jan 2018
Interview
I was given a taken home project which was very vague and time consuming. They refused to answer my clarifying questions. This process was a complete waste of time for all parties. They reached out to me again years later and said they changed the process. I politely declined.