Glidewell Dental Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

My interview with Glidewell was pretty unique compared to other places. The first day involved group interviews and a simple timed math test, which they apparently always do. There were three group interview rounds. In each round, a software developer would give us questions or tasks, and we'd have to collaborate as a team to solve them. The first round felt average in difficulty, the second was really easy, and the third was super tough. This was way different from other interviews because instead of one-on-one questions, they wanted to see how we'd work with others in a team. It was actually a fun experience for me since I prefer teamwork. After passing that, I got invited back for the 'technical interview.' They told me I'd pair program with a developer for an hour, doing some basic algorithms. Then, I had a 4-hour solo project to build an app that uses the Bing search engine. While it was solo, they said it was fine to ask for help from the other Glidewell folks in the room. I almost finished it; the main goal was to see how well I could research and ask for help.

I got a call from a recruiter on LinkedIn and had an initial phone screen over Skype. After that, there were a few hours of one-on-one interviews. The hiring manager did a good job explaining the interview process and what they'd be testing. They said the one-on-one with the team would be like peer programming, focusing on my thought process and allowing me to ask for help, not really testing my specific language skills. However, it was the total opposite once the interviews actually started. They gave me an app requirement and asked me to code in the Chrome console, but then decided it would be better to RDP into someone's machine. Also, every time I asked a question about what method would do something, probably because I was nervous with five people watching me and one lead developer occasionally sighing, it didn't help. To make things worse, the lead developer said he had to leave and needed his machine 20 minutes before the interview ended. I get that I was a nervous wreck coding in front of people when I knew I was being judged, but the hiring manager said beforehand that these were the kinds of issues they wanted to avoid, hence the peer programming where you aren't judged on language skills. But I was clearly judged on my Angular 5+ framework skills for a senior software engineer role. I really liked the hiring manager's process and leadership approach, but the lead developer clearly didn't implement it well. I've been a senior person in previous jobs and have helped my peers and junior developers, so I highly recommend people not join this team because it's not a very encouraging environment.

I applied through my university's career site. First, there was a recruiter phone screen that wasn't too difficult. After that, I had an in-person interview. This included a chat with HR, a basic math test like in grade school, and then a technical interview with the hiring manager and a senior manager. They asked me about C++ concepts like method overloading versus overriding, and templates, plus some brain teaser type questions.