Popmenu Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I started with a chat with one of the cofounders, Justis. He walked me through the company's software setup and we had some great talks about software in general. He was really cool and treated me like an equal, which made it a good time. Then I got a take-home coding challenge. I could choose to do either front-end (react) or back-end (ruby on rails). I picked the back-end option. Later, I got to discuss my solution with some engineers at Popmenu. It felt like a preview of working with the team. For the last interview, I met with another lead engineer and the director of engineering. This was more about seeing if I'd fit in with the company culture. I got to share about myself and my past work, and also ask questions to figure out if it was a good match.

Applied online and then got a call from the technical recruiter about a week later. We talked about my background, and she told me more about the company and the job. Next, I talked to the engineering director. He was super enthusiastic and explained the job more and answered my questions about the company and tech. I wasn't familiar with their tech stack, but I did an online coding challenge. You can use documentation for it. After that, I had a technical call with two engineers to go over my coding solution. They said it's not about getting it 100% right, but more about how you think. Lastly, I had a joint call with a senior director of product and a lead software engineer. It was mostly about fit and work style questions.

They wanted to interview me for a job I was overqualified for, instead of a role I felt that I was qualified for. They really do enforce the 'minimum years of professional experience' part of the job description in a very strict way, so beware of that. I've never had a potential employer focus so much on the pure number of years I've been working in this career, rather than the things I've learned and experiences I've had. I'm glad that I had other recruiters telling me that I ~was~ qualified for mid-senior positions because otherwise the interviewer at Popmenu might have made me doubt my worth. Obviously, every company has their own policies in hiring talent and I respect their opinions about what's important to them in that process. However, this strict policy is unusual based on my other experiences in this field and good to know if you're planning to interview with them.