I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Affirm (San Francisco, CA) in Sept 2016
Interview
Their recruiter contacted me; he was professional and helpful. After an introduction and two phone interviews (one technical, one with a hiring manager), I went to their office in downtown SF for an onsite interview. I was looking for a machine learning position, but I interviewed for a data scientist position instead. I had four interviews, two data science, and two coding interviews.
Overall, the technical interview process was straightforward and simple. Their data scientist engineers are smart, energetic, but lightweight on statistics/math. When I start talking about the statistical theory or even regularization, they looked lost. Their approach to machine learning was mostly based on trial and error rather than analysis. They would try different algorithms from sklearn and plug it to panda hoping it would work.
I was completely shocked by their cultural fit interview which happened during their lunch time.
The interview was with 3 of their engineers from data science team. Their data scientist team completely lacked vision. The first red flag appeared when I started asked questions about Affirm's business and finances. How the company is managing the risks? How the data science team is achieving the Affirm's vision? Where affirm would be in the next 5 years? These are the typical questions I asked every company. I was shocked when they answered half of my questions with "we cannot tell you that, that is secret". They had no background on finance, which I found shocking for a company with a modern banking mission. The final nail in the coffin was when I asked how they validate their business model or measure success, expecting an objective answer from a "data scientist", instead I got the "dude, look around. We have the coolest office".
Finally, during the interview I was working a tsv file that had a lot of user information. Even if the user info was hashed/mangled, they exposed a recruit with the type of the data they were collecting from their users, which is unethical and violates the user's privacy.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Affirm
Interview
One phone screen and one on-site technical interview. Phone screen was on feature interpretation of machine learning models. On-site was 5 hours, with technical and theory questions. The technical were really nice because they gave a real data set to play with. This is a key difference from other companies and gave me a sense that they understand what data scientists do. Whiteboarding with data, in my opinion, is just nonsense. You have to see and visualize the data to understand it and what issues you may have with it. The theory questions were fairly standard stats/machine learning questions, though some were tricky.
I left the interview with a good impression of the company and with the feeling that they understand the role of data scientists within the company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Here's data in tabular format, import, explore the data, and build a baseline classifier.
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a review. We strive to provide a positive and engaging interview experience for all candidates, and we’re glad to hear you left with a good impression!
The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Affirm in Jul 2019
Interview
Their recruiter contacted me. We talked over the phone briefly and they scheduled a call with one of the team members. The second call was ok. We spent lots of time convincing each other about our understanding of some ML techniques. After one day, recruiter sent me rejection message.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How we can measure the importance of features in regression? and then some special cases.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Affirm
Interview
I had a great recruiter interview. But the second round was really awkward. At first, they missed my call and rescheduled it after 40 minutes of original time has passed. The rescheduled call wasn't very good either. The interviewer shows zero patience and seems to be pretty pissed when I can't answer the question. I was constantly talked over when I was struggling with the questions. Overall it was a disappointment after that great recruiter call
2
Affirm response
6y
Thanks so much for sharing your feedback. We wish you the best of luck in your search.
Affirm response
7y
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a review. We strive to provide a positive and engaging interview experience for all candidates and we’re sorry to hear your time with us did not reflect this.