The interview process was pretty standard, but the role ended up being very different than advertised. The job description made it sound like it was more operations/sysadmin style of work, but after the first technical interview it became clear that it was more of a SWE role. Dropbox also ghosted me after the coding interview.
I applied online. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Dropbox in Jun 2021
Interview
Recruiter Phone Screen
Code Sample
- Problem on Hacker Rank/similar. It involved blocking I/O + CPU and some concurrency/async aspects
Code Sample Review Call
- Chatted with a SRE about the code sample
Virtual On-Site (5-6 hours)
- 1x behavioral/related to past projects and experience
- 2x code samples
- 1x project discussion (discuss a technical project you were responsible for designing/implementing)
- 1x troubleshooting/debugging
- 1x architecture/design
Throughout the entire process, communication was continually stressed and emphasized at each phase--this is where it ultimately fell apart for me. After completing the code sample, the follow-up call was scheduled. After that, a week went by with no follow-up. I sent an email to the recruiter but didn't hear back--apparently the email went to spam (I don't use Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc, things get lost sometime, OK). Two weeks after code sample discussion call, the recruiter finally gets back moving me to the final/"on-site" stage. A useful information packet is provided with lots of tips. I emailed the recruiter a couple questions but never heard back.
The on-site went so-so. I think I probably didn't do well on the troubleshooting (it was largely verbal with some charts--troubleshooting a "production" issue). It wasn't immediately clear their operating model--maybe it was my fault for not clarifying up-front whether things like SSHing onto production servers was standard. I think paying close attention to the Dropbox blog probably would have had some useful hints for the architectural portion.
After the "on-site", I don't hear back for a week so I emailed the recruiter. They replied they've been busy, there's been some holidays, etc so they're still waiting on feedback--OK. Another week goes by so I shoot out another email. This time, nothing.
Six weeks later, I receive an automated rejection email from their recruiting software saying the position has been filled. For stressing communication so much, I was rather disappointed at the untimeliness and lack of feedback
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Dropbox
Interview
Interviewer asked me to create a program to find all the files with same content in a directory. He kept interrupting me with follow-up questions and didn't let me complete the code.