Job Search: On-Site Interviews
I’ve been navigating job applications and interviews and so on for the last month or so, which has greatly contributed to my relative radio-silence. Things are finally wrapping up, so I’m taking this opportunity to write up some thoughts on the primary contenders in my search. These notes is mostly for my own benefit, but if others find them helpful as well, then great!
Facebook (Weds Feb 15)
There’s no two ways about it: Facebook is fantastic at giving interviews.
The day started when my recruiter collected me from the lobby and gave me a schedule detailing who I was meeting with and when, what each of these people did at Facebook, etc. I was led to a conference room in which my interviews would take place. The interviews themselves were fun, engaging, relevant, and seemed designed as opportunities for me to demonstrate why I am an excellent fit for the position. They were technically challenging, but simultaneously very fun, and resulted in me leaving feeling like they had assessed me to my capabilities, and I had left them impressed.
Naturally there was a brief “can this person code” segment, but besides this we spent the entire time focused on security topics, and I had opportunity to ask many questions of people on teams I would likely be joining. The day actually seemed to be as much about me interviewing Facebook as a candidate workplace as it was about Facebook interviewing me as a candidate employee. The interviewers themselves seemed genuinely excited to be interviewing me, as though they felt I was doing them a favor by showing up. Finally, after the interviews, my recruiter collected me and closed out the day, letting me know when I could expect to hear back, and escorted me outside.
The interview process was so smooth and pleasant I actually sent in a thank-you note to my recruiter. Recruiting and interviewing is hard. Facebook rises to this challenge, and does it spectacularly well.
Google (Thurs Feb 16)
My day at Google was a stark contrast to that at Facebook.
I was aware from emails that my interviews would last from 11 to 4, but had no schedule. As a result, I did not know how many interviews I would have, what the topics would be, how long any of the individual interviews would be, and even now I don’t know who my interviewers were.
I was collected from the lobby by my first interviewer, and we began by getting the “can this person code” segment out of the way before breaking for lunch. Besides this first segment, the remainder of the day was spent in one of the stuffy 2-person phone rooms. To my surprise, the sessions continued to follow the “can this person code” rubric until the very last one (I am not sure why, given five successful Google internships, Google felt this this was a good use of their time or mine).
I spent a total of about 30 minutes at Google discussing anything security related at all, and even this end-of-day session consisted primarily of being asked to list all the generically “bad things” I could think of on the internet – great as a softball “hey lets chat” type question, but certainly not anything that would allow me to showcase what makes me valuable for the job to which I am applying.
I refer to it as “end-of-day” mostly out of surmise given that it was 4pm when the session ended: the interviewer and I waited around with me for a few minutes after he was done, but when it became clear that nobody else was coming to collect me (and then unable to leave me unsupervised) he escorted me out of the building. I’m not sure if there was something else I was meant to do, but lacking any additional information and nobody else knowing where I was, I left the premises. I never met my recruiter, nor did anyone close out the day, or let me know when I might expect to hear back.
Affirm (Fri Feb 17)
Affirm is located in down-town San Francisco, and essentially sells consumer financing plans. We started with a tour around the office, which was rather pleasant. After that, we got started with technical interviews.
Affirm took an unusual approach with regards to the interviews: all code-related questions were performed on my own laptop, in my own dev environment, etc. It was actually very refreshing to be able to use my own tools and editors on a device with which I am familiar, as compared to whiteboard coding, or using some burner computer with weird tooling etc.
The interviews were extremely efficient in both testing for and communicating what Affirm needs in their next hire. It was clear relatively early on that neither of us was the right fit for the other. While Affirm did not extend an offer to me, I found the experience pleasant and extremely effective.
I wish more companies would handle on-site interviews like Affirm does.
LadderLife (Sat Feb 18)
LadderLife is a Series-A startup in Palo Alto, which facilitates getting life insurance. They agreed to interview me on a Saturday to save me having to fly out to the Bay Area a second time, which was very accommodating of them. As it happens, they had planned a pizza party for that saturday, so a fair number of employees were on-site.
We spent most of the interviews talking about my research, my interest, things I had done in the past, etc. There were a few technical questions, which involved writing code on a whiteboard. They seemed particularly interested in Mycena Cave – perhaps unsurprising because they’re creating a web app and this is a web app that I have created. Amusingly, one of the technical interviews involved describing the database schema as well as subsequent queries on this schema to implement a system almost idental to one I built into Mycena Cave. I started this one out with “I should tell you that I’ve already thought about this problem, having implemented it myself. Here’s how I did it:”. That went over very well.
To describe the team at LadderLife in a word, it would be “mature”. While still a very small startup, they take great care to maintain a proper work-life balance. They do not ascribe to the typical “work hard play hard” mentality that you see in a lot of startups. They’re actually fairly research oriented – as an example, after one employee solved an interesting testing pipeline caching problem in their build infrastructure, he published the technique in a conference paper and presented it. LadderLife is a Clojure shop, which is also pretty interesting, although I have never written Clojure before.
My primary hangup is that they don’t have much need for a Security Engineer at this point. They have graciously offered me the title and the work focus, but I suspect most of my time will be spent simply building a web application. They’re also a fair bit smaller than I am super comfortable with: while it’s true that I could easily find another job if LadderLife ceases to exist, any portion of my compensation that takes the form of stock options is at risk.
In spite of my reservations, LadderLife ended up offering me the position to be their head of security. This would represent a potential quantum leap in my career, even if the company goes under. The offer is very appealing.
Workiva (Thurs Feb 23)
Workiva handles SEC filings for other companies, and is based in Ames, Iowa (near Des Moines). The location is particularly attractive because this is near Megan’s family. The location is particularly nice because holy wow their office is amazing: while obviously much smaller, the office and on-site amenities are actually nicer than Google and Facebook. The office building, while all on a single floor, includes:
- two cafeterias (one is particularly nice)
- a gym
- a game room
- a “quiet room”
- several microkitchens
- very nice cube areas
- etc. etc.
I did not expect this.
The interview process was unusual. Mostly the interviews seemed to just consist of having conversations with a bunch of people. I was not asked to write any code, whiteboard or otherwise, during my on-site interviews. When asked about it, it turns out that during our casual conversation about my topics of interest, I was inadvertently answering the technical questions they intended to ask. That worked out nicely.
One thing that makes the Workiva office particularly awesome is their dog policy. Google is a “dog friendly” office, but it’s somewhat rare to see a dog and there are some hurdles in terms of bringing yours in. Workiva, by contrst, is seriously dog friendly. During one of my interviews, there were two dogs in the conference room with me, and I was the most interesting thing in the world while I was eating my bit of cheese. The security team in particular seems especially dog-happy. It was fantastic.
The work environment also seems particularly nice. The people on the security team all seem like a big group of friends, looking for a new friend. We seem to get along very well.
I must also give a big shoutout to Kim Knoll with Executive Resources. Kim was the recruiter who put me in contact with Workiva, and she has been utterly phenomenal throughout the entire process. If anyone else is looking for a tech job in the area, I strongly recommend looking her up and working with her.
Two Sigma (Tues Feb 28)
Two Sigma is a hedge fund in New York City. I say hedge fund, but really they’re more of a technology company that happens to run a fund. They flew me out twice, so this section is broken into two.
Tuesday February 28
The interview process was intense. I started my first technical interview at 9am, and was still actively interviewing at 6pm with a 1 hour lunch break. That being said, the interviews were all extremely enjoyable.
The code related interviews took place on a machine they provided, which I assume was a fresh VM Ubuntu install. Since it was a fresh install, I had to take a few moments to download a reasonable text editor etc., but that went by reasonably quickly. Almost none of the technical portions of the interviews took place on a whiteboard (this is a good thing).
While the process was intense, it was also intensely enjoyable. The problems I was solving were both interesting, unusual, and downright fun to code. More importantly, my interviewers were engaged and had an active sense of humor: somehow they turned hammering out the kinks in my submissions into a thoroughly enjoyable and also funny endeavor. Non-technical interviews involved a lot of talking about my research, about my interests, and so on.
They made it very clear to me that their security team was currently not hiring, and asked how I felt about that. I responded that while I am a competent developer, I am sure there are better developers than me out there that are also cheaper. I was clear that I would most certainly consider a non-security related position, but they would not be getting the best bang for their buck.
Apparently, I impressed. At risk of downright bragging, one piece of interview feedback that was shared with me was: “working with people like Oliver is why I joined Two Sigma”. The net result became that while the security team was not currently hiring, they would do whatever they could to change that. They seemed far more interested in getting me in the door versus worrying about particular headcounts, etc.
So, they invited me for a second round of on-site interviews on March 10th to meet with people on the security team, as well as Alfred Spector their CTO, and some people on the Labs team whose attention I apparently grasped. (Two Sigma Labs is essentially Two Sigma’s version of Google’s Google X.)
I had expressed a worry that living in NYC would be difficult with a fiancee and two 60 lb dogs in tow, and they suggested a number of neighborhoods I might look into, and also offered to fly Megan up with me so that we could look at neighborhoods together. I must have really impressed. I do not yet have an official offer from Two Sigma, but given the above I am confident that I will receive one.
Friday March 10
This batch of interviews was much more laid back. They had already made their decision on me, and the purpose of this interview was to meet people on the security team. It turns out that “security is not hiring” actually meant “the security team does not hire people without significant industry experience”, and they were trying to work out whether to make an exception for me. They did.
The rest of the day was spent selling me on Two Sigma, having me tour their two buildings, getting a look at their amenities etc. It’s an extraordinarily nice place. Educational potential for me here is phenomenal.
Instart Logic (Thurs March 1)
Instart Logic is a Series D startup in Palo Alto. You can sort of describe them as a CDN, but that doesn’t really do it justice. Their flagship product is a Javascript “nanokernel” which they ship with their customers’ pages, which allows them to virtualize the entire Javascript API. This nanokernel allows for some pretty great optimizations, and they’re just beginning to build out potential security gains which can be had.
My
Squarespace (Mon March 13)
Squarespace is a web platform in New York City. Being in their office is basically like being on the inside of an iPhone. This focus on aesthetic comes possibly at the expense of some utility, but then again the office is optimized for people who are already familiar with it, so maybe this is not important.
Affirm politely rejected me at the end of my on-site interviews. Google advanced me past the hiring committee, but I withdrew my application after continued nonsense.
I received offers from all others.