Hinge Health Staff Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I interviewed for a Staff Backend Software Engineer role and it was a great experience. The recruiters were super helpful and the process was well-organized. They were really responsive and gave me lots of info. The phone chat with the hiring manager was good for understanding the team and expectations. The take-home test was a good way to see if I could do the job, it was like real work. The onsite interviews with engineering and product folks were organized and they asked good questions about my technical skills. I liked that they talked about moving from monoliths to microservices. It would be cool to meet the people I'd work with directly to see how we'd vibe and if we'd fit well together. Also, maybe add a data structures and algorithms question in the onsite. Big thanks to the recruiters though, they were awesome and really cared about fit, asking tons of behavioral questions. They really helped me decide.

The first step was a 45-minute screening interview with a recruiter. It involved a lot of questions about my past experience. However, the recruiter couldn't answer basic questions about the role, which made me wonder how they'd even evaluate candidates. It's pretty weird when technical hires have long calls with non-technical recruiters. They should either do a quick intro and then move to the actual process, or have the first call be with someone who actually knows about the job.

The interview process was pretty standard, maybe a bit longer than usual. It started with a recruiter call, then a chat with a developer, followed by a take-home coding test that took several hours. After that, there was a full-day onsite interview, which was virtual for remote roles and could be split into two sessions. The take-home test was a good, realistic one. One of the onsite interviews involved discussing the take-home project, explaining what was done, and how it could be improved or scaled. The whole recruiting process was quite slow, taking over a month from start to the compensation negotiation stage. At that point, I declined because they initially offered $190,000 based on hired.com but then lowered it to $175,000 during negotiations. It felt a bit ethically questionable, though unfortunately not uncommon. I'm not sure how they expect to be competitive with such a long interview process and lower salaries. It would have been a neutral experience if they hadn't changed the compensation offer at the last minute.