Grubhub Engineering Manager Interview Questions
& Process

I interviewed for a Front-End Engineering Manager position back in April 2021. The whole on-site thing was spread out over two days, about five hours of calls total. The recruiter leading up to it mentioned multiple times that coding wouldn't be part of it, and it would be more about high-level architecture discussions, whiteboarding, or maybe finding a bug in some existing code. Since I'm not really deep in React.js syntax these days, I figured that would be fine. But, the very first round turned out to be a CodePen/code-sharing exercise in React.js, which was totally unexpected given what I was told. The interviewer(s) didn't give any hints or verbal cues, and I wasn't sure if I could even look up documentation. We ended up cutting the coding part short and just talked about CI/CD and automated testing for the rest of that session. The next few rounds were about my past projects and processes, or behavioral questions, and I spoke with an Engineering Manager, a Product Director, the VP of Engineering, and the hiring manager. They were all really friendly and helpful. I heard a decision would come early the next week after everyone gave their feedback. By the end of the following week, the recruiter called to let me know I wouldn't be getting an offer because of a 'huge technical gap', even though other interviewers seemed to have positive feedback. It's a shame they didn't ask for another coding sample or even check my GitHub to verify my technical skills, especially since only one round was like that. Misleading candidates and relying too much on everyone agreeing perfectly seems like a flawed hiring approach and might cause them to miss out on good people.

So, I had a review from about a year ago. The interview process had 3 main parts: first an HR call, then a meeting with the Hiring Manager, and finally a virtual Onsite. The virtual Onsite itself was split into 3 separate sessions: one technical interview with an Engineer, a cultural fit interview with a VP, and another session with the Hiring Manager. After the interviews, they actually gave me feedback on what I was missing, which was way better than just a generic rejection email.

It was a longer interview process than I was used to, but it felt right in the end. It covered all the necessary areas and domains to make sure we were aligned.