piazza Interview Questions
& Process

I got email responses pretty quickly. It started with an informal phone call with a product designer, which went well. We just talked about my interests and my background. The next round was a longer conversation with an engineer about my interests both technically and strategically, with more in-depth questions about my background. Feedback was that it was very good. The next round was a very quick conversation over video chat with the CEO. Pooja seems to be a bright and engaging person, but she wasn't very engaged with our conversation. She asked me some interesting questions about my background and we talked about what an ideal career path might look like for me. Finally she asked me if I had any questions for her, and I asked her some questions that tied in what I learned from the engineer in my previous call with my own insights from using the product. Her responses were very curt, and surprisingly evasive. After a week of waiting they told me there wasn't a role that matched my background, which is very confusing since my background was on my resume. If the background isn't a fit, why talk to the candidate to begin with, and then why take them all the way to a final round? Overall this process feels incredibly disingenuous. Every interview was essentially just behavioral, which is even more confusing - how can you hire someone for product without discussing anything about the candidate's visions for design, methodology, or execution?

The design lead at Piazza reached out to me after seeing my resume and portfolio on their site. We had a casual first skype call, and then I got a design exercise to make a splash page for a hypothetical feature. I sent it back a few days later and they liked it, so they scheduled another interview with a different designer. This one was weird - I had to make a UI mock-up of one of their screens in real-time while they watched. After that, I had a behavioral interview with another employee, asking situational questions and about my interests. Then, the original design lead called me for a long interview where we discussed my design exercise, brainstormed, and talked about the role and culture. Finally, they told me I had to speak with the CEO, but it kept getting delayed because the CEO was busy. I waited over 4 weeks, following up weekly, but then they told me they hired someone else. It was disappointing because I put a lot of effort into the process, especially waiting to talk to the CEO. The people were nice and spoke highly of the company, and the process was good until the very end which felt unfair.

I sent my resume with a quick note to their jobs email and they got back to me in a few hours to set up a culture screen for the next day. It was mainly just some questions about my interest and experience. After that, I had a technical screen with a lead engineer, which went well, just a standard question and a logic puzzle. Because I'm local, I went onsite for a few hours to meet the team and the CEO. These were nontechnical chats for culture fit. She asked some really sharp questions about why I was interested in specific roles and companies, which was nice. Then I returned a few days later for an onsite technical test where I spent a few hours building a real feature with them. They gave me an offer a couple hours after that. Overall, the interview process was really personal and moved very quickly.

The interview process was fast-paced and fun, with a very casual vibe. Everyone I talked to was really nice and genuinely interested. I got to chat with people from various teams, and even the CEO. After they flew me out to Palo Alto for the on-site interview, there was radio silence from them for 5 weeks. I didn't receive any updates. I sent a couple of follow-up emails, and they finally replied saying they had paused the search for this position and would reach out if they ever started it again. Despite the confusion, I really enjoyed getting to know everyone and the entire experience.