X Data Scientist Interview Questions
& Process

Recruiter reached out to schedule a screening. I was asked about my background and why I'm interested in the role. After that, I did a coding challenge that involved a question I saw on LeetCode (Twitter section, last 6 months).

I was upfront about not having industry A/B testing experience, but highlighted my extensive causal inference work and strong statistical background. Both recruiting and the hiring manager assured me that specific A/B testing experience wasn't a requirement. However, during the technical interviews, I was mainly asked A/B testing questions. I could answer some using my statistical intuition, but others felt like rote memorization questions, like "have you done process X before when running an experiment?". It was a frustrating experience given my relevant background, especially after being assured it wasn't a prerequisite. When I mentioned my lack of industry A/B testing experience, the interviewer responded condescendingly, attacking my qualifications in a way I won't repeat publicly. I'll avoid Twitter for future job searches. I've received multiple standard offers from top tech companies in similar roles where my experience was evaluated as discussed beforehand (e.g., Google).

After applying online, I was contacted pretty quickly. The interview questions weren't that difficult, but the format was interesting: they asked 'how-do-you-solve/do-xyz,' where xyz was a specific task. It seems nowadays any job involving data analysis is labeled data scientist. For me, as a statistician, 95% of job postings were for data scientist roles. Back in the day, statisticians were interviewed by data customers from different fields who wanted to know how I could help them reach their goals. But now, data scientist interviewers, like those at Twitter, seem to be younger, more tech-savvy data analysts with quantitative backgrounds. They primarily want to know if I can perform specific tasks they've encountered. This distinction is crucial for both candidates and companies hiring for data scientist positions.