Storm8 Interview Questions
& Process

The first interview was supposed to be 15 minutes but ended up being less than 10 and felt very unprofessional. After I complained to HR, they scheduled an hour-long interview. This second interview felt ridiculous and like a waste of time. They told me the pay range and asked for my preference, which I provided. Then, they had the nerve to ask if I would accept a lower salary after explaining the perks. It made no sense to offer a range and ask for my preference just to offer less. The whole interview experience was a joke, and I probably avoided a bad situation. It's clear why they have a 2.7-star Google rating.

The interview process began with a standard recruiter phone screening to gauge my skills, personality, and career aspirations. As the role was within the User Acquisition (a type of marketing) team, I was given a take-home project. I had three days to develop a storyboard sequence designed to assess my ability to commercialize, acquire more players, target demographics, and utilize social media. After they reviewed my project, the department manager conducted a phone interview. From the beginning of our conversation, I didn't feel a strong connection, and it seemed like the decision had already been made before the interview even started. I didn't receive any follow-up, feedback, or updates about the position or my candidacy from Storm8 after that call, which I found a bit unprofessional, especially for a company with such a high reputation.

I applied in person and then had an HR phone screen which had a few basic technical questions. After that, I had an online collaborative coding test done over the phone using collabedit. The final stage was an on-site interview. Overall, the process was pretty smooth and the recruiter was great. The phone coding test wasn't too hard; I solved everything but they wanted cleaner code. The interviewer was nice, though hard to understand sometimes because of his accent. The on-site was way harder. I met three engineers back-to-back, and each gave me a LeetCode medium or hard problem. They said they care about your thought process, so talk it out if you get stuck, but honestly, it felt like they only cared about the final code. Like the phone interview, the engineers had accents that were tough to decipher. After they'd write a problem, they'd just wait silently. For coding interviews, I usually follow a process: understand the problem, do examples, write pseudo-code, code it, then test it. But here, it seemed like they just wanted the code itself, making my process kind of pointless. Plus, you have to type it out on a laptop using collabedit. I got solutions for all three problems, but my code was messy and I ran out of time to clean it up. It's super stressful to get a tough question, get zero feedback on your progress, and then have to type out perfect code under pressure.

The hiring process was very smooth and quick. I was contacted through LinkedIn about an open position at Storm8 and had a quick chat with the department head over the phone. I was then forwarded to their HR/Recruitment team. They were friendly and concise. A date for an in-person interview was made in under a week. On the day of the interview, their HR team went out of their way to check in throughout the interview and make sure I had everything I needed (water, coffee, etc). It helped to create a relaxing and friendly environment (this is an important factor to me as interviewing can make me extremely nervous). Interviews at Storm8 are done in a panel format where the team you will be working with interviews you two at a time. For my interview this was repeated three times, the fourth was with the department head alone. This is pretty standard for the Game Industry. Although I must say, I was impressed that they had reviewed my LinkedIn beforehand, had printed out copies of my LinkedIn profile, and asked pertinent questions while taking notes. This is not something that happens at most companies when going through the interview process. Expect to have a challenge question asked during your interview (brain teaser question). They were both personable and efficient throughout. Time from first contact to offer - 10 days.