I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Goodwater (Burlingame, CA)
Interview
Job description is too general compared to other jobs out there with the same title. It can mean hundreds of different things.
No respect during the presentation. Questions in the middle are fine, but they kept on interrupting me after every single statement I made. Did they not read the presentation I submitted beforehand? Hiring manager did nothing to defend me. That doesn’t bode well for the future.
Overall it seems like they expected perfection from the homework. But can you really do that in 48 hours? C’mon. The other interviewer coworkers were so provincial and only cared about their tiny little contribution to the homework. Do you really expect everyone you hire to be smarter than you and a super-hero in all portions too? You need to put in some work to help and teach/mentor new people as well. It is clear these other PhD type coworkers lack management skills.
Diversity to Goodwater means “We only hire 6’ 7” non-white men with a PhD.” If you don’t fit this mold, then sorry. I didn’t see a single white person when I visited the office. Nor a woman who was not HR or the receptionist.
Recruiter took a week to send a rejection letter - plus sent it on a Friday evening at 10:30 pm? What’s the deal?
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Analyze this data set of 'winner' e-commerce companies. Find criteria to describe a 'winner' and then apply this to a new company.
I applied online. I interviewed at Goodwater in Mar 2020
Interview
The whole process took around a month. Their recruiter reached out to me and arranged a call with one of the data scientists on the team, where the questions were about my past projects mainly. Then the take home that was due in 48 hours, and then the final round that was 3 hours of SQL, Stat, Machine Learning, and metric definition, which was online due to the Coronavirus situation. Overall the team was super friendly, smart and to the point, the recruiter was very responsive and the take-home was really challenging but at the same time super interesting. I would suggest watching Alex Schultz's video on youtube for some of the metrics. (churn, retention,etc)
The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Goodwater
Interview
Be careful. Interviewed with Goodwater on phone, then data science take home test. Went silent for a week, came back asking to discuss code. Went through code for an hour and asked to explain all concepts (statistical methods/idea etc...). Went silent for a week, then wrote saying they weren’t moving forward.
3 months later I’m hanging out with another Data Scientist at a firm and we’re discussing a VC firm who went dark on us after doing coding projects and explanations. We asked each other the name of the company at the end of the conversation. Guess who, Goodwater.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Data Science Take Home Test asking to figure out which companies were likely to become Unicorns (like an Amazon) who are now in startup mode.
