I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Twilio in Jun 2013
Interview
Started with a message from a recruiter asking if I was interested in the role. When I responded that I was, the recruiter asked for times when I would be available to talk, which I provided. Then I heard nothing for a week.
A new recruiter emails me saying they had been given my contact info and wanted to know when I was available to talk. I gave new times. Didn't hear back for a week. Recruiter responded with 'I must have missed your email!'
First recruiter sent standard 'Are you interested' offer email again, even though I'd already said yes to the first.
Finally my first phone interview with yet another recruiter! The person was very thoughtful and pleasant to talk to but didn't know much about the position I was applying for.
Follow-up interview with developer scheduled, then canceled the day of.
Finally had first technical interview with developer. The developer was very helpful and answered all my questions. This included a live coding exercise.
A second technical interview occurred a week later, again with a developer. This interview was mostly a live coding exercise (because I took to long to answer a question), which had to be cut short. Again the interviewer was very professional and happy to answer any questions.
In the end I wasn't given an offer, which was expected due to my performance on the technical interviews.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Array-to-Tree
Write a function that given an array representation of a binary tree will convert it into a typical tree format.
The following is a visual representation of expected input and output:
Input: [7, 3, 9, 2, 4, 8, 10]
Output:
7
/ \
3 9
/\ /\
2 4 8 10
Hint:
left child index: current_index * 2 + 1
right child index: current_index * 2 + 2
Three-stage process: recruiter screening, a test task and on-site interview. Both test task and the on-site were simple and straightforward, with focus on practical skills. On-site included the prospective team lead, VP and a team lead from another team in the same location.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- What data structure would you use for variable-length phone number prefixes?
I applied online. I interviewed at Twilio in Jan 2025
Interview
Interviewed for the L2 role on the Channels team. I did the online assessment (~3 hours), passed it, then was notified saying they filled the role and were no longer considering me. No referral to another role either. Long story short, don't let this awful company waste your time.
2 algo problems (listed below), 1 easy SQL problem, 1 easy API data retrieval problem, and 2 trivial multiple choice problems.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Similar to LC1664 - Ways to Make a Fair Array except you don't need to count the number of ways to make it fair, you just have to find the 1 index to remove to make it fair.
If you google Hackerrank Approximate Matching you can find some material on it. Involves calculating a text score for substrings of a word based on a given prefix and suffix.