WillowTree Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So the hiring team itself was great, honestly one of the best interview experiences I've had. But the company's overall process? Horrific. They asked about psychological safety in a culture interview, which seemed promising. But it turns out WillowTree is lying about valuing psychological safety because they'll rescind an offer if you ask too many questions about the fine print. They then had the nerve to send a candidate survey asking for feedback, which is just comically bad after rescinding an offer. It's like they're asking to be embarrassed by their own broken processes.

It was a pretty simple interview process. We had a technical discussion with questions specific to the platform. All the interviewers were knowledgeable and really engaged with the questions. The difficulty felt about right, not too overwhelming. I left the interview feeling positive about it.

The whole thing was long but moved fast. It began with this super awkward video thing where it was just me and my webcam talking to a website, not a person. It'd give me questions, a minute to prep, then 1-2 mins to answer before cutting me off mid-sentence. So weird, couldn't really prep and no way to get feedback. The questions weren't techy though, mostly about my experience and why I wanted to join WillowTree. I figured it was just to filter out people who didn't get the job or were way off. After that, I had a phone chat with the recruiter, which was really chill and happened within 2 days. Again, just talked about my background and the company. Then, I got scheduled for a technical phone screen with an engineer later that week. That interview was nice too. The guy had checked out my GitHub beforehand. He asked about my repos and general iOS stuff. He was gonna have me do a coding exercise, but skipped it after seeing my GitHub. The next day, I got the take-home test. It was like a homework assignment to build an app, had my own pace but told not to go over 8 hours (I think I spent 10 over a few days). It was actually fun, did it over the weekend and sent it back Sunday night. By Tuesday or Wednesday, they flew me to Charlottesville, VA for a full day of in-person interviews. They sorted out my flights, hotel, and schedule. I also had to prep a presentation on a topic I chose and bring my laptop. The in-person day was packed with interviews, like with six people. I got there a bit early and they greeted me right away. The tech recruiter met me and gave me a quick office tour before the first interview in a conference room. The morning interviews felt like standard developer interviews: problem-solving and whiteboard coding. It was casual but professional, and the interviewers were friendly and smart. Lunch was provided and was also an interview with two current engineers at a restaurant. The afternoon interviews were different: an HR chat, a pair-programming session, and then my presentation. The very last interview was a casual walk with the head of engineering. The day wrapped up around 4:30 PM. It was a good experience overall, though a whole day of interviews was pretty tiring. Got an offer by email about an hour after I left. The whole process took less than a month, mostly due to my travel availability.