OfferUp Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So I had this first interview with the engineering lead, then a technical interview where they asked me the same intro questions and talked about random stuff, and then gave me only 15 mins to do a Java exercise. It was like an easy LeetCode problem, but 15 mins is way too short. I got a partial solution and talked about the Big O N complexity, and they let me go to the next round. The next round was 4 more interviews: 2 technical, one with the manager, and another for cultural fit, making it 6 interviews in total. The manager interview was cool. He asked about my current job, the tech I use, my problem-solving methods, and projects I've finished – you know, actual engineer questions. The second coding interview was pretty much a repeat of the first. They spent the first half hour asking those pointless intro questions, leaving only about 20 mins to solve a Java problem. The task was to build a basic LinkedList class and merge two sorted lists. I tried recursion, but there was a small bug at the end, so it wasn't perfect, though the approach was solid. That little mistake got me rejected right away, and I didn't get to do the other interviews. Basically, they're after LeetCode coders, not really software engineers.

Had a lot of back and forth with the recruiter first. Then I went in for an hour meeting with a manager to talk about the job. After that, I had to do a take-home assignment. Honestly, the respect level wasn't great. The coding task was pretty basic, they said I could use any language and focus on performance with a jmeter test. Things went wrong with the assignment setup, and it ended up taking me nearly 20 hours to finish. Even if it was half that, it was still 10 hours of my time. They initially said my demo day might not work because they were busy. When I showed up, the team was 10 minutes late, and we had AV problems. After just 3 slides of my presentation, I was bombarded with questions, and then someone impatiently asked to skip to the code. I was supposed to have 3 technical interviewers but only got 1. HR then met with me to talk about how great the company is, which I think was just to kill time. The craziest part? They never even wanted to see my app run.

The process kicked off with a recruiter call to check for culture fit and understand my skills and interests. Then, there were two technical video interviews. The final stage was an onsite with 4 technical interviews and a non-hiring lunch interview. The whole thing was fast, and the recruiters were super helpful and responsive. All interviewers were respectful and seemed really passionate about their projects, giving a good feel for OfferUp's culture. They were engaged with what I said and seemed excited about the interviews.