Soar Tech Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was pretty standard. I sent in my application and heard back after some time. Then I had a phone interview, followed by an in-person interview. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

The company seemed to only want people with advanced CS degrees and not open to other profiles. The phone interview was okay, but the in-person was rough. It had two parts. The first part involved coding a singly linked list from scratch in Java or C while hooked up to a projector and getting grilled on every tiny detail. It was hard to think straight with constant questioning. The second part was a hypothetical about using sensors to guide a robot from a start to an end point. It was kind of fun, but that's about it. The whole thing felt like a waste of time because I didn't fit their mold. They're missing out on innovation by only hiring from the same local university.

It's a 3-part process. First, a phone screen where they ask about your background, interests, and a simple coding question. Then, there's a remote coding test, which is a bit of a pain. It's 3 hours long - 2 hours for coding and 1 hour to discuss your code, and it felt pretty tough for an entry-level role. You can use online resources, but it still takes ages. Finally, there's an onsite interview with system design and software architecture questions. Even though it's a small company, their hiring process is really thorough and takes a lot of time.

So first there was this online coding test, then I had an HR interview, and finally an in-person interview with the engineering team. During the last one, I had to whiteboard a solution to a problem they gave me.