Sonder Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I sent in my application online via LinkedIn. The whole thing took about 3 weeks, which was pretty quick. My recruiter was super responsive and always kept me in the loop about where I was in the interview process. The first phone interview went well, and after that, I got invited for a full-day onsite. It was really thorough, and they seemed to care a lot about how you think and solve problems, not just if you can ace a test. The questions were tough but practical. It seems like a company that's really growing and would be a great place to work. The office looked as nice as their apartments. The people interviewing me were well-prepared and helpful. Honestly, as a candidate, I couldn't have asked for a better application and interview experience. It makes me feel like they really value their employees.

I was contacted on LinkedIn by someone from Sonder who explained the company and job offer and provided a link for me to schedule an initial interview with their recruiting partner. I booked a call with that recruiter and after this call I was sent an online test. The online test was badly written, sometimes questions had missing parts, were poorly worded, ambiguous and even not allowing to select multiple answers (when it was expecting multiple answers). I've scored 77% but the minimum rate was 80%. Despite that, they still wanted to proceed with my process. I then had an interview with their technical interviewer. She was very unprofessional. For example, after asking me to write a SQL for a certain case, while I was typing, she said: "can you please hurry up? I have more questions to ask". Also, many times she interrupted me in the middle of my answer, as soon as she realized the question was answered correctly. Last but not least, some questions didn't make sense. For example, she said that circular dependencies between 2 different microservices caused compile-time errors. In short, keep away from this company. It's a waste of time. They should revisit their whole technical recruiting process.

I got hooked up with Sonder via Vettery.com and had about a 30-minute phone chat with their VP of Engineering. He talked about himself, the company's mission, what they'll be working on soon, and how the engineering team is set up. The rest of the process went super fast, and they worked with my schedule. The next day, I did a 1-hour technical phone screen over video using CoderPad with one of their engineers. It was about making clean, maintainable code and we had time for other questions too. The following week, I flew to San Francisco for a full-day onsite. The recruiters sent a schedule beforehand, which included a heads-up about the coding part. It suggested taking 30-60 minutes to think about how to model an app for Sonder, given some rules and limits. The onsite included: an office tour, a deep dive into Sonder's tech, the coding exercise, a system design chat, a meeting with the Director of Engineering where we talked system design, and a culture interview where we went over all my past jobs. During the coding, we spent a lot of time checking my code model and tweaking it as requirements changed. Even though I thought about the prompt for longer than suggested, I didn't get 100% of the coding done, partly because I decided not to use an ORM. A few days after the onsite, I chatted with the CEO. We talked broadly about my background and big-picture stuff about the company, more business than tech. It was a great experience overall. The onsite was long (be ready for a full day), but everything felt relevant to the job or the company culture. I knew what to expect for each part, and the interviewers were clear when we worked through problems, no surprises or confusing questions. It was a thorough but fun process with a nice, skilled team.