Expensify.com Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

Started with a recruiter call, then a pretty hefty assessment. They are very particular about what they are looking for, which is okay, but it's hard to meet standards you aren't aware of. They give you unlimited time to complete the assessment, and knowing how much optimizing to do is a tricky balance. Overall, the assessment was fun, so I didn't mind.

This was a super frustrating and unprofessional experience. The application was really cumbersome. I spent a lot of time on their weird email screening questions and a detailed take-home test, but got barely any response and no explanation for why I was rejected. Months later, even though I'd grown a lot professionally, I reapplied and was told that applicants who try to reapply are usually not considered, implying you have to be perfect from the start. When I did get another shot, their interview methods were odd again. They're really rigid about second-chance applicants and want candidates to be exactly like them, showing a really narrow view of ambition. The interview also made it seem like they prefer people who just code and work a lot of overtime, which raises red flags about work-life balance. It felt like they're not really open to developing talent or supporting a healthy work-life balance. Glad I found another company that actually values growth and a balanced environment.

So I recently went through Expensify's hiring process for a developer role. It was a take-home challenge that required building a web app with PHP, JavaScript, and their API. Honestly, it was a bit of a letdown and I felt unsupported. On the plus side, it was a real-world task, and they did offer a way to ask questions. But, the expectations were super unclear, they even said the challenge was meant to be 'incomplete or ambiguous.' While I get that developers need to handle ambiguity, it felt like a bad place to test it during a hiring challenge. They didn't give any hint about how long it should take, so I ended up spending over 20 hours on it, even building a sorting feature. Plus, we had to host the PHP environment ourselves and make it public, which isn't feasible for everyone and raises security concerns. The rule about no external libraries, especially with the ambiguity, made it way harder than it needed to be. Turns out, they rejected me for using a UI library, which I thought was fine, but they said it violated the 'no external libraries' rule, even though that wasn't super clear upfront. They also wanted us to meticulously track our time, which just added more stress. Even though questions were allowed, it felt intimidating to reach out given how important the challenge was. A bit more support would have been nice. They should give clearer guidelines, a time limit, rethink the hosting requirement (maybe screen-sharing?), and allow essential libraries to make it more like real development. Overall, the challenge felt more like a burden than a helpful evaluation. It should introduce company culture, but this just felt like I was being tested, not welcomed.