Politico Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So the interview process over at Politico was pretty smooth and organized. First, there was a screening call, then a technical chat, and finally, I talked with some of the team members. Everyone was professional and easy to talk to, which made the whole thing a good experience.

I had a phone screening with a recruiter, and I thought it went well, but I didn't make it to the next round. She contacted me about two days later via email to let me know that the applicant pool was very competitive and I wasn't chosen. It was a pretty standard process, and the role was a bit beyond my current skill set because they were looking for someone with more senior-level experience.

So I had this recruiter call first, and then they set up a phone screening with the CTO. Kinda weird, right? Like why is the CTO doing phone screenings? Felt like he was really micromanaging. Anyway, we covered the usual stuff and then he hit me with a few tech questions. They were all about optimizing algorithms for massive datasets, which I told him I haven't really done since I'm more of a front-end person who does a bit of back-end for web apps. It was honestly the worst phone interview I've ever had, but I guess that's on me. The job posting was super vague too, so I didn't really know what to expect. I feel like judging someone on a few basic questions that are easy to look up and solve quickly is a bad way to interview. Long story short, we didn't move forward, and I heard the next stage involves a lot of whiteboard problems.