Storm8 Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

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 online coding test was a typical dynamic programming problem. The onsite interviews were similar to the online ones. This was a letdown because the coding idea matters, and only perfectly working code counts. I think this is a silly way to interview since you can't expect perfect code without a proper dev environment. I made a few small mistakes that I think cost me the job. The last interviewer was annoying; he bragged about his own job offers and choosing this company. He also didn't really listen to my code explanation, focusing more on running the code for a yes/no answer. I'm sure they could replace these interviewers with software if they keep this up.

I was initially contacted by HR who gave me an overview of the company and then a quick pre-screen focusing on basic CS questions about time complexity. The first main interview was a telephonic round where I had to write code for a problem within about 30-45 minutes. Then came the onsite interviews. There were 3 rounds. First, an HR round to check cultural fit. Second, an interviewer presented an array sorting problem (can't share details due to NDA). I managed to code a solution with O(n) time and O(n) space complexity, but the interviewer was looking for O(1) space. With a little guidance, I improved the space complexity to O(1). Third, another interviewer gave a graph problem. I coded a recursive solution. During the walkthrough with an example, I admit I got a bit lost with the local variables in the recursion and confused myself, even though the solution itself worked and the interviewer acknowledged that. (My feedback to that interviewer: 'It felt like you'd already decided after the first few minutes. It would be better to pay closer attention when someone is explaining their solution and give them a chance to correct any mistakes.')