Weights & Biases Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

This was the most disorganized interview process I have ever been a part of. Email replies from recruiting were late or completely absent. In one case, a question about an interview session was responded to two days later, a full day after the session about which I had the question. In another, an email in which I was told to expect a reply in "30 to 45 minutes" was never responded to at all. It seemed that no one was communicating with anyone else. I had two "system design" sessions, and the person in the second session asked me the same question as the first because they had not done even the most basic coordination. The last person I talked to as part of the process asked me "am I the first person you've talked to?" Feedback was contradictory. I was originally told that I had done well on one portion of the interview, then in a following email, told that I had done poorly. Which was it? I was told to expect a final determination on my candidacy "Friday, or no later than Monday". I did not hear back until Tuesday afternoon. At that point I obviously knew not to expect good news, but that's the sort of thing I should hear from a person, and not have to infer from the silence. I will say that I enjoyed talking with everyone individually. People were friendly and (mostly) helpful. However, recruiting isn't just about having good people involved, but having a process that works and treats candidates with the attention and respect they deserve.

The interview went great—I felt confident throughout, covered all major points clearly, and connected well with the interviewer. Overall, I’m feeling very optimistic about how things went! I did receive the offer.

Had one phone interview that was a recursion problem, followed by 5 rounds of onsite interviews. The onsite had 1 frontend round and 4 algorithm and data structure rounds, some of which were LeetCode style. The recruiter gave me very positive feedback from the interview panel and said everyone liked me, so we moved to reference checks. After more than two weeks post-onsite, I received an automated reply stating they were moving forward with other candidates. Lesson learned: don't get overly excited until a written offer is in hand. I really enjoyed talking with the founders and the engineers. It's a real bummer this happened. I hope their recruiting process can be improved, but I do understand they have other urgent priorities.