MapQuest Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I was contacted by a recruiter about MapQuest in Denver. I went straight to an on-site interview, no initial phone screen. The office had an open, start-up vibe. I had two separate 45-minute whiteboarding sessions with potential teammates. The first had a simple programming question, but the interviewers seemed unprepared and hadn't reviewed my resume, which was unprofessional. The second session also involved a programming question, but the interviewer struggled to explain it clearly, admitting he hadn't asked it in a while. Even as I worked on the solution, he was unclear. Then, he and another interviewer started arguing about my solution's correctness in front of me. Again, very unprofessional. Finally, I met with the hiring manager, who was new. We had a good chat, but he asked me how I thought the interview went and about the difficulty of the questions. I didn't want to tell him his team needs interviewing training. Overall, they were unprepared, unprofessional, uncoordinated, and seemed to use a standard set of questions.

It started with a recruiter call to gauge interest, then a hiring manager call where we chatted about MapQuest's tech stack (Scala, Java, Ruby on Rails, ObjectiveC) and what they're working on. They asked about my skills and interests. Then, I had an online coding challenge to convert a string to morse code. The next step was an onsite, half-day interview. I met with individual engineers and a pair of engineers. I had the option to sit at a pairing station to work on a problem from a current project or use the whiteboard for design questions like how I'd design software for a vending machine. An interviewer also reviewed my GitHub code, walking through and discussing my contributions. The managers also asked standard background, experience, and motivation questions, and talked about the company culture and processes.

The interview process felt really fair for everyone involved, allowing both sides to figure out if it's a good fit. MapQuest did a great job with that. For developer roles, there's usually a code test. The take-home test was great because it showed general dev knowledge and problem-solving without being insane. The in-person interview was also timely and fair, I could easily show my skills and they got the info they needed. I also got to ask questions to people with different jobs and skills. Meeting the team members also gave me a good vibe about the company culture, which is big for me. The whole thing was fair and quick; I spent maybe 2 hours total, and they got back to me the same day. So, the whole process took 2 days! I'll definitely be reusing some ideas from this. And that Mac shop comment some other person wrote? That's just silly.