Casa Systems Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process started with an onsite technical interview with some engineers, followed by a meeting with the engineering director. I noticed people seemed overworked and stayed late, which made sense after I got the offer. It seems they're short-staffed, and maybe for a good reason because not many people would accept an offer here. If they think you're good technically, HR gets involved. They require five references and your last pay stub, which are mandatory. I doubt they actually contact the references; they probably just want to expand their network using you. The only reason they ask for your pay stub is to offer you the lowest possible salary. The offer includes a 12-month non-compete, an NDA, and the contract. The contract and non-compete have a lot of restrictive and some downright abusive clauses. Reading the offer felt like something out of Orwell's 1984; it seemed like they wanted to own you, not just buy your work or skills. They're not upfront about the offer details, basically telling you what you want to hear but not putting it in writing, and giving you only one business day to sign. The offer isn't competitive, especially with no extra pay for the non-compete or other clauses. I've never seen a clearer case of avoiding a bad situation than turning down this offer. I was hesitant to believe the negative reviews online, but I experienced many of them myself. I'm sure most of the positive reviews are fake.

Talked with the hiring manager about my past experience during the phone interview. Then had a lot of technical discussions with 1 engineer, 2 technical managers, and the CTO during the on-site interview. The interviews were mainly about domain knowledge, TCP/IP, Ethernet, and multithreading. There was no coding challenge.

There were 3 rounds of interviews. It started with me introducing myself, then we went over my resume and discussed my past experiences. Finally, I was asked to solve some simple coding problems, like implementing binary search. Overall, it was a good interview experience.