I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Two Sigma (Houston, TX) in Dec 2013
Interview
This review focuses mainly on the phone and technical interview. The phone interview went well. The JR person explained the company and what it does very clearly and concisely. The atmosphere was relaxed, but I remained guarded as to not say too much. The next portion of the interviewing process was the technical. The technical interview starts with a coding challenge. The coding challenge is done using Interview Street website. There are two coding problems to solve and two hours to do it in. There are some samples out there to get a feeling for the tests. I thought that the tests were a little heavy in use of container classes like STL to solve the problem.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The time limit and way that the technical interview went with the coding challenge made me feel like I was hacking a solution instead of showing Two Sigma my abilities.
Opening the technical round, I was taken aback when they asked me to implement a thread-safe LRU cache, which I had just practiced on prachub.com during my prep. We spent a lot of time discussing different locking strategies, and I had to explain how to extend the cache for TTL-based eviction. It felt quite intense, and though I received an offer, I ultimately declined as the team dynamics didn’t seem like the right fit for me. The coding question was definitely a highlight, and I'm grateful for the targeted prep I had done.
First you have to do Hackerrank, which is doable but can be tricky. Then they like to screen your coding with leetcode like problems. After that, they start screening your design skills and general technical depth.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
leetcode + design, tech deep dive, very similar to the Big Tech
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Two Sigma (New York, NY)
Interview
Had 3 rounds of Technical Interviews which I cleared easily. Recruiter told me that there would be few behavioral interviews once the headcount freeze would be lifted. It has been more than a year now and even after several follow-ups haven't received any response from the company. It also appears that I am not alone and there are many others who have cleared interviews but were kept on hold due to unavailability of headcount. 2S needs to stop wasting precious time of candidates if they do not intend to hire.
