Khan Academy Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The technical interview was really unprofessional and didn't give me a fair shot. The interviewer was driving for part of it, which wasted time and made me question his focus. I offered to reschedule when he mentioned a time conflict, but he didn't. The interview felt like he already had a solution and just wanted me to follow it, instead of letting me show how I solve problems. He also made me write unit tests during the coding part, which took up time and stopped me from showing my actual technical skills. I told the recruiter about this, but they wouldn't give me another chance to prove myself fairly. It's a shame they didn't see that this interview wasn't a good measure of my abilities.

The initial interview was a phone screen where we talked about my past work, especially in support roles since that's part of the job. They also made sure I was okay with the non-profit pay and benefits. The next one was a video interview and it was a disaster. The interviewer had trouble with Google Meet, and the hiring manager seemed annoyed, saying they couldn't see or hear me. I could see and hear them fine, and tried to fix it. After 10 minutes, the hiring manager realized they had turned off their video/audio and blamed a Google update. We skipped intros and they gave a quick overview of the team and tech, saying role specifics would be later. Then came an old-school verbal technical interview with coding questions, mostly unrelated to data and devops. I got most right, but the interviewer cut me off, cheered like I was a child, and insisted on specific 'faster' answers with long, irrelevant tech histories, which turned out not to be faster. We were 20 minutes over time, so I ended the call. The interviewer seemed confused but said they'd recommend me for the next round. I just left. There was no time for role specifics or my questions. I was disgusted and advise engineers to avoid this place. I've never been patronized like that, and it's shocking Khan Academy keeps someone who treats people that way.

So first I had this HackerRank test with 4 problems on algorithms and CS basics. After I passed that, they asked if I wanted to do a project or a phone interview, and I picked the project. It was a good one that let me have a lot of freedom and gave us good stuff to talk about in the interview afterward. I passed that interview too and then moved on. We chatted about my resume and some past job decisions, like why I made them. I thought we'd do a coding problem, but instead, they asked a system design question. It was a pretty open-ended question, which was cool because we could go over different ways to do it, but they decided not to move forward with me after that. I think there was supposed to be one more interview before an offer, but yeah. Everyone was super helpful throughout the whole thing, answering all my questions.