Foursquare Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process included a recruiter screen, a basic technical screen, a coding interview with a sister team, and an AWS knowledge interview with someone from infra. Finally, there was an interview to ask the hiring manager questions. I didn't get an offer, but they provided very detailed feedback at the end!

The interview process had 5 rounds: an initial HR call, followed by two live coding sessions, then a system design interview, and finally a technical interview with a senior engineer. All rounds felt quite easy. Although I didn't receive an offer, I'm unsure if the role was filled or closed. The interviewers were professional, but the company didn't leave a great impression, especially considering the recent 30%+ layoffs and negative employee feedback online. Ultimately, I believe the outcome was for the best.

I applied online. A recruiter contacted me about a week later to schedule an initial call. They communicated really well via email and during the meeting. They asked typical questions for a Customer Success role. The next step was a meeting with the hiring manager. I was looking forward to this because the hiring manager had an impressive LinkedIn profile. However, when the meeting started, the hiring manager said their internet was down and they couldn't turn on their camera. They didn't ask me to turn mine off, didn't offer to use their phone for the call (which would have enabled their camera), and didn't suggest rescheduling. The interviewer, whose name was unclear and their video off, proceeded with the interview in what felt like a dismissive tone. They asked good questions about my experience but only gave very brief, one-word answers after I responded. The main thing I learned from meeting the hiring manager was that I wouldn't want to work for them. Honestly, the whole experience felt like a waste of my time and I was left feeling disappointed. I gave the recruiter my feedback after getting a rejection email. The recruiter's response was something like, 'we know interviewing can be stressful,' but I never said it was stressful; I found it unprofessional. My advice is to ask the recruiter specifically what the hiring manager is looking for in a new hire. I suspect they're after a highly strategic and experienced CSM, but companies and managers often don't communicate these specific requirements clearly to the recruiter, which makes it hard for candidates to succeed in the initial screening.

The interview process was pleasant overall. Overall, I got the impression that foursquare is a company with interesting data sets, talented employees, and good WLB. It started with a hiring manager screen that had an open ended hacker rank coding question about location data and a few follow up questions. The onsite had four rounds: 1. Programming (implement a class to perform certain functions). 2. Statistics and ML (some standard questions on ML, as well as some finance/trivia probability questions). Rounds 3 and 4. Data science case study involving location data with a little bit of coding.