Pinger Interview Questions
& Process

I was contacted by a third-party recruiter about roles, including one at Pinger on their backend team. I first had a mostly non-technical phone screen with the VP of Engineering. About a week later, I had an onsite interview. This involved meeting the hiring manager, three engineers, and the VP of Engineering for technical interviews. I also met with the CTO and CEO for non-technical interviews. The whole onsite took about 3.5 hours. I got a verbal acceptance the same day and a written offer a day or two later. They gave me a few days to wrap up other interviews and decide. I didn't negotiate because the offer was already $5-10k higher than I expected.

I applied and got a quick response. Someone got back to me within 3 days to set up a 30-minute phone screening. It was just standard questions about my background and experience. A few days later, I was invited to another interview via Zoom. This one was an hour long and included the hiring manager, shift manager, and the recruiter. They interviewed me one by one. It felt pretty generic, a mix of typical interview questions and some casual professional chat. I used examples from my experience to answer their work-related questions, feeling I was totally qualified. It took them over 2 weeks to give me an update, which made me realize I was ghosted and not moving forward.

Applied online, then got an email asking me to answer some questions about my background which were already on my resume and cover letter. I sent them in and followed up a couple times. Then I got scheduled for a 45-minute phone screening. The call itself seemed okay, but I had some worries that I was hoping to get cleared up later. They were really slow to respond with updates and basically ghosted me. My main concerns were that setting up the first interview was a hassle because they weren't very responsive, and during the call, the admin team seemed disorganized, understaffed, and like there would be too much overlap in duties between admins. I also got the vibe that it was a hierarchical admin setup, which is the opposite of the flexible, close-knit culture they talk about on their site. If you have good EA experience, I'd say skip this one.

I submitted my resume to the Pinger team when they came to my campus, SJSU, for a mini job fair. Got an e-mail for an interview the next 3 business days. Interviewed on-site 2 days later (SJSU is 2 blocks away from the Pinger office). Interview consisted of 2 parts: behavioral, where each candidate talked to 4-5 interviewers; and coding questions on paper. Interview went smooth, everybody was very welcoming, and process was fast and efficient. I interviewed on a Thursday; I got an offer the next Monday.