Yammer Interview Questions
& Process

After a phone interview that was pretty standard, I was invited onsite for a full day of interviews. I had around 9 or 10 interviews with groups of 1-6 people. It felt really friendly and positive though. I met with product managers, UX designers, developers, statisticians, and the VP of product. The questions were typical product management questions, the kind you'd find in preparation books. They really wanted to see how I think. I was asked a lot about current mobile development trends and understanding the reasoning behind developers' product choices. We looked at and talked about various mobile apps, like LinkedIn. Make sure you're ready for this by installing and understanding several apps.

I met some Data Scientists from Yammer at an event they hosted, and after chatting, I asked about internships and was pointed to an HR person. We exchanged emails, and I got set up for a phone screen. It was kinda technical, with a couple of probability questions, including one on Bayes Rule. They said they'd let me know about a second screen, but I didn't hear back for like 3-4 weeks. Both interviewers were late, one by 10-15 minutes, cutting into our time. Then I was told I'd get an on-site interview. The scheduling was slow, but the on-site itself went okay, despite a couple of hiccups. The room wasn't ready on time, so I waited a bit. While waiting, another employee jokingly told me not to mess up. My first on-site interview was with a product manager who asked about my interests and relevant work. My second interviewer seemed to be pulled in last minute and hadn't seen my resume, so I spent a good chunk of time explaining my background and giving my 'pitch'. She asked a counting/discrete probability question and about how I'd tackle a past problem she faced. The next interviewer, an alum from Berkeley, asked more probability questions and a Causal Inference question about a problem he had. He then passed me off to the director of Analytics for about 10 minutes before the director had to leave. Overall, the whole process felt disorganized and not very committed. It took from mid-January to mid-March.

I sent in my application online for the Senior Ruby Developer gig. A few days later, I got an email from HR to set up a phone chat. This first call was basically a chat about tech, my experience, and my resume. We also talked about the Yammer product and other stuff, which was pretty chill. The HR person also laid out the whole hiring process: phone call, then a few Skype interviews, and finally an onsite interview, followed by a chat with an executive or someone high up. After the initial phone screen, they scheduled a Skype interview with a senior engineer. We went deep into current tech and the algorithms used for searching and indexing, and my experience with open-source software. They also hit me with some Ruby questions. The second Skype interview was set up by the first interviewer with the technical lead or another Ruby engineer for the next day. They actually called me an hour and ten minutes later than scheduled, which was a bit of a wait. We started chatting, and he asked some straightforward tech questions, but unfortunately, our Skype connection kept cutting out, so I'm not sure if he could hear me properly. We hung up and tried to reconnect. The connection was better on his end after that, but then he asked about extending modules again, a question I thought I'd nailed in the first interview. That same question dragged on for about five minutes due to his bad connection, which was frustrating. He also asked about my background, functional programming, and some Ruby/Rails specifics like convention over configuration, attr_accessor vs. attr_accessible, and extending modules. It felt pretty basic. I didn't make it to the next round, but I suspect it was because of the bad call quality or maybe they found someone with more experience since I only had about two years of experience for a senior role. Still, I enjoyed the conversations!

The hiring process moved pretty fast once I connected with the recruiters, wrapping up in about two weeks. The initial screening felt pretty relaxed, and while I get it's a startup, I expected a bit more formality. For instance, I'd rather they didn't dive so deep into my personal life or what I do for fun here in San Francisco. After getting the green light, I had to come in for a full day of interviews with about five different people. Honestly, some of the interviewers weren't really prepped and hadn't even reviewed my resume, which was a bit surprising. The last part of the process involved giving a presentation where I had to pitch Yammer to the same folks who interviewed me earlier. I thought the questions during the presentation were too focused on technical aspects, like product integrations, instead of my presentation skills.