SpotX Interview Questions
& Process

The interview was at the office with 5 people from the team, one by one: the director, lead software engineer, two other project managers, and the release manager. I felt judged for leaving my job, like they thought I run away when things get tough, and they grilled me on my fight or flight mentality. I get they want someone who sticks around when projects are hard and the hours are long, but the director didn't even listen to my reasons for why my current job wasn't working out. If they're gonna label me as a flyer, they should let me show how I've fought and maybe lost or won. The other four interviews were mostly about why I want to leave. It's a good question, but repeating the same story four times is too much. I wish they'd asked relevant questions, like how I've worked with developers or release managers, or what PM tools I use. The questions made me feel like Project Management isn't that respected there. It's hard when you're doing fine without then getting told what to do by a PM. I understand that's a tough situation. Not all interviews were bad, but the focus was off. I actually enjoyed talking with three of the interviewers and asked about their projects. But overall, I felt defeated. I didn't see growth potential there, and while the vibe is casual, the interview could've been more professional. I know what I want, and that team wasn't it, although an offer might have changed my mind.

So I started with a recruiter call, then had a quick phone interview with the VP of Engineering. After that, I had a longer technical phone interview with a developer. These phone interviews took about a week or two. Sometime in there, I did an online coding test. After the last phone interview, I went in for an on-site. They showed me around the office and I met with a bunch of different engineers and developers for in-person interviews. They asked me a lot of technical questions and had me use the whiteboard to write pseudocode and map out solutions. Most of the questions were about data structures and algorithms, and general programming knowledge. It was a pretty comprehensive process.

First, I talked to a recruiter over the phone. Then, I had a phone interview where they asked about my technical background. After that, I went for an on-site which consisted of four interviews over three hours. The first three were with six QA engineers, covering technical and personal questions (none of that 'what's your greatest weakness' stuff, thankfully). The final interview was with the head of QA, who threw out some brain teasers to see how I'd approach problems and discussed how the company and team operate and where I could fit in.

We kicked things off with a quick 15-minute phone call. After that, there were four more interviews, each lasting about 30 minutes. It was a bit unusual because the interviewers hadn't read my resume and didn't know anything about my background. They were all in the same part of the company but at different job levels.