MySpace Interview Questions
& Process

The whole thing kicked off with a phone screen. It was kinda odd 'cause the manager kept asking the same question over and over, and some of the questions just didn't fit the job or the field at all. Then I went in for the in-person. The same person from the phone call was there, asking the exact same questions again. Even weirder, they kept asking what I'd do on my very first day, in detail. And get this, they used a paper test for what they called 'tech evaluation' - talk about old school! Some questions had typos, which they admitted to during the group discussion. After that, a senior architect had a great 1:1 with me. Then came the 'panel interview'. They took my written test, tore it up, and went through it in front of me, marking things wrong, right, or with question marks, like back in school. Then they started acting like gods, asking random questions and being super attitude-y. The senior architect was sarcastic and just plain rude. The clueless manager, the one who kept repeating questions, didn't grasp anything I was saying and just kept rambling. Some specific moments: they marked my MySQL answer as wrong when it was actually correct. When I suggested an Oracle solution, the senior architect sarcastically asked if we should shut down everything and use Oracle as I proposed. And to a question I said I didn't know, someone asked if I'd gotten any ideas now and if I could even think.

This company is a mess - I had 4 interviews and was actually excited about the position. Weeks of excuses like 'I'm trying to get ahold of the hiring manager', 'So and so is on vacation', 'We are waiting to hear from your references' filled a void of real information. I was jerked around on job title, who the position reports to, salary that went from (slightly) above average to well below. Only after hearing that I had received an offer from another company did someone take their head out of the sand and finally commit to making me an offer.

I had a recruiter call first, then they set up a phone interview. About a week after that, I did the phone interview which was completely technical, lasting over an hour. Another week passed and I heard back from the recruiter who scheduled an on-site interview. The on-site was a half-day event where I met three different people and was asked a variety of technical questions.

I had one phone interview, and then a three hour in person interview. This was the most organized technical interview I have ever been on. The architect had three exercises for me to do. A batching exercise, a partition exercise, and something about service broker. The hiring process was fast, so expect a call within a few days after the interview if things went well.