Otter.ai Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So I interviewed about a year ago, and it started with a recruiter call, and they were super nice. Then I had a coding interview for about 45 minutes with an engineer. The problem was like a LeetCode medium-hard about finding the shortest path between two islands in a grid. I did a BFS solution which worked, but then the interviewer wanted me to optimize. I was fine with that, and things were going well until I started coding the optimized solution. I swear I heard chess sounds in the background. I looked and the engineer was literally playing chess and not even paying attention. It was so disrespectful and frustrating. I mean, can you not pay attention for a 45-minute interview? That's not even enough time for that problem unless you've seen it before. Worst interview ever, I really hope that's not how this company operates.

The interview started with a remote technical interview and a chat with the hiring manager. Then came the onsite interviews, which included two technical rounds and a meeting with a VP. I got mixed signals throughout the process; recruiters and interviewers didn't seem to be on the same page. Most technical questions were fine, but one interviewer had a strong language barrier, making it hard to understand the question. The question itself was badly written, and asking for clarification didn't help. This interviewer also seemed to misunderstand my explanations about why certain approaches wouldn't work, which was pretty frustrating and felt disrespectful. I was told I'd get feedback the next business day, but it took several days to hear back. Honestly, it doesn't seem like a great place to work.

A recruiter hit me up on LinkedIn and we chatted about my background and the company. After that, I had a 45-min technical interview. It was a standard LeetCode medium problem. They got back to me fast, and then I had the onsite, which was three 45-min interviews. It was split, with a virtual part and an in-person part at their Mountain View office. The virtual one was a behavioral interview with an engineering VP. They asked pretty standard stuff like "tell me about a mistake" and "why do you want to work at Otter?" Something different they asked was "what gets you up to go to work everyday?" The first onsite was with an engineering manager. She had me whiteboard the architecture of a project I worked on and then asked questions about it. After that, she hit me with a common LeetCode question. The second onsite was with an engineer, who gave me a two-part question that wasn't LeetCode. It had a long setup and lots of details, so it was more about managing all the info and explaining my solution clearly. I got the offer three business days after that. Everyone seemed really smart and competent.