X Product Manager Interview Questions
& Process

I applied online and also went to a university session. About 11 days later, I got invited to two 30-minute video calls. The first interviewer was late, making the interview feel rushed. Both video interviews felt rushed, like they just wanted to check boxes instead of really talking things through, which is unusual for APM roles. It felt like they cared more about finishing than getting to know me. Out of over 1000 applicants, maybe 100 got to this stage. The questions weren't super hard, but not great if you like brainstorming. They wanted quick answers. They touched on product design, but not like in the PM books. Then things got weird. I was told potential onsite dates, but the day before, I hadn't heard anything. I messaged the recruiter, and found out they'd moved the dates but didn't tell me. They sent a confusing email about my status. To my surprise, I got to the onsite, which was two weeks later. I scheduled a recruiter call to go over the day. She rescheduled it twice and was late both times. The actual call with her was nice though. A big issue was that Twitter wouldn't help with travel costs if you lived within 50 miles of HQ. As a student with low income, getting to the city without a car is expensive, around $40 each way. It's weird for a big company to put that on students. The onsite itself was better than expected, but still not great. I had a nice lunch, and the interviewers were generally nice. But the disinterest continued. My first interviewer was 12 minutes late to a 40-minute slot and asked the wrong question, a technical one, so we wasted about 20 minutes. They seemed to bring about 20 people for the final round. The questions were straightforward: one strategy, one product design, one 'technical', and one estimation. The strategy question was about streaming videos and Netflix's rise. The product design was a birthday feature for Twitter. The estimation was tweets per second during the Super Bowl. The 'technical' question was a high-level look at the Uber Pool algorithm. I didn't get an offer and honestly, wouldn't have taken the job anyway. The whole experience was bad and didn't feel like a good culture fit. The whole process took 3.5 weeks from applying to the onsite, and 6 weeks for the final rejection.

First, I had a call with a recruiter to go over my background and what I'm looking for and why I was interested in Twitter. Then, I had a phone screen with the hiring manager where I was asked some questions about product management. After that, I had two onsite interviews. The first onsite was with 6 people (3 PMs, 2 EMs, 1 Sr Director of Eng) where we did some case/brainstorming on increasing engagement for new members, improving messaging, and the registration process. They also asked about a time I failed and how I decide to launch/continue features. The second onsite was also with 6 people (hiring manager, Sr PM, design manager, VP of product, Sr EM, Sr dev) and focused on roadmap balance, challenging/proud projects, an app analysis, convincing others to run experiments, and what I'd do with unlimited resources, plus a question about my previous company's product decisions.

I got into the interview process through an internal referral. First, I had a 30-minute phone chat with a product director for one department. About a week later, a recruiter contacted me for another 30-minute phone interview, this time with a different product director covering several departments. A bit over a week after that, I received an email inviting me for an on-site interview for a PM role in one of the latter director's departments. During the on-site, I discovered it was actually for a different department, though still under the same director, which seemed a bit disorganized. The on-site lasted around 4 hours, and I met with roughly 8 people, some of whom were just observing. The whole experience was quite enjoyable; everyone was friendly, and I felt at ease. For the on-site, it's advisable to arrive early due to the time needed for check-in and parking arrangements. Following the on-site, I proceeded to a final presentation round where I delivered a presentation using Google Slides on a given topic to the same group of people I met earlier. Although it seemed to go well, I ultimately didn't receive an offer. The outcome was communicated via email as my recruiter was on vacation. Despite not getting the offer, I genuinely liked the interview process.