Factual Interview Questions
& Process

It started with an online coding test, which was pretty simple, with two LeetCode easy questions to solve in 45 minutes. About an hour after I finished the coding test, HR reached out to schedule a phone call. We spoke a week later, and HR explained the whole interview process. The actual technical phone interview happened another week after that. The interviewer asked me about implementing thread-safe read and write functions in Java. I used the synchronized keyword, and they asked for other ways to do it, so I suggested using an int counter for writers and readers. I felt like I did okay, but I didn't make it to the final on-site interview round.

So I had the usual phone interview with HR, then a phone call with the Head Sales Engineer. They asked about my day-to-day at my last job and if I knew certain technologies. Then came the in-person interview, which was pretty long, like 6 and a half hours, meeting with 8 people, 5 from the department. The interviews were mostly fine, but there was this one guy who was super weird and condescending. He acted like he knew development and scripting but clearly didn't. He'd ask a question, I'd answer, and he'd laugh and say I was wrong, cutting me off before I could explain. For instance, about Bash scripts, I said you need correct permissions and to make it executable. He laughed and said executable was something different. He kept doing this, asking questions, saying I was wrong, cutting me off. It was pretty upsetting, so I started giving one-word answers like 'I don't know' because he'd just tell me I was doing it wrong anyway, even for stuff like drawing a database or writing a JSON script. He asked again about running a Bash script, and I mentioned using sudo su - then chmod +x. He questioned if I did it in binary with 755, implying +x was wrong. I wanted to ask if he knew the difference, but he probably would have just cut me off again. After him, the last interview was fine. I complained to HR about that guy before leaving. Got an email two days later (Friday) asking to schedule a call for Monday about my candidacy status. I was stressing all weekend, thinking it was good news. Turns out, they just called Monday morning to say I didn't get the job. They made me wait three days for that and to ask for feedback. I mean, just send an email saying no and ask if they want to discuss feedback. If they're looking for feedback, they need interviewers who ask relevant questions and treat candidates with respect, not condescension. And don't make people wait three days for a rejection call; an email is better, and then offer a call for feedback if they want.

I had a terrible experience - not with the interview itself, but with getting responses from the company and trying to actually get the interview itself. I talked to Factual recruiters at my university career fair, and gave them my resume. I received an email within the next week, and I ended up scheduling an interview with them. When the interview date arrived, the interviewer didn't call me, and the recruiter didn't bother emailing me. I sent the recruiter an email telling them what had happened, and the recruiter took almost a week to respond, answering with a vague excuse. She asked me if I was available for another interview, and when I told her my availabilities, I just got radio silence from her again.

I applied online and heard back in about a week. The first step was a quick phone chat with HR. After that, I had another phone interview, this time with an engineer. They kicked things off by asking some straightforward questions about my resume, then moved on to technical stuff about Python and regex. Things were going okay until the end when they threw in a brain-teaser about pulling data from Yelp. That's where I started to struggle.