Hive (CA) Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

It started with a recruiter phone screen and then went into four technical rounds that were LeetCode style. Two of those rounds were with junior software engineers, one with a senior engineer, and the last one was with the CTO. After that, there was a chat with the CEO. The whole process moved pretty fast, which was very nice, and the recruiter was super responsive.

It was a pretty standard interview process, actually a bit lighter than some other places. First, there was a technical coding screen that was Leetcode style. Then, the 'final round' had two parts: one Leetcode style coding question and one system design question. The coding questions were Leetcode hard, which felt a bit like gatekeeping because they were the kind that needed a specific trick to solve rather than being difficult in terms of choosing the right data structure. The system design question was pretty standard and fair, like one you'd typically find.

So my interview journey started around early September and went all the way to late October. It was like 4 technical interviews plus an intro round, and then I got the rejection. From what I've seen on Glassdoor, there was supposed to be at least one more interview after mine, with the CTO. My specific process involved: - 1 intro round - 1 technical round where I had to answer 2 questions - 2 technical interviews back to back - 1 final technical round with the CTO. Definitely some red flags though: - Every single interviewer was at least 3 minutes late, and one was over 15 minutes late. - The recruiter actually forgot to schedule my next interview, although I'll give them the benefit of the doubt because they're probably swamped. - The number of rounds was unclear; I had no clue how close I was to finishing because they could apparently add or remove rounds. - Even though there were 4 technical interviews, they were all just standard LeetCode problems. I asked during the HR round (which was actually with an engineer) and they said there were no other types of questions, which was weird. - Not a major red flag, but I had to use three different platforms for the technical problems (Google Docs, Coderpad, and I forget the third one). - The vibe with the CTO was awful, like talking to a brick wall. I went a few minutes over because I couldn't fully crack the problem. He mentioned my interview made him late for his next meeting and he had to leave. Guess his schedule was tight... You should probably check out more Glassdoor reviews before deciding if you even want to apply here. Honestly, I'm kind of glad I got rejected.