Uber

Uber Interviews

1. Oct 19, 2021

   Software New Grad Interview

   Anonymous Employee in United States

   No Offer

   Negative Experience

   Difficult Interview

   Application

   I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Uber (United States)

   Interview

   Phone interview: common BFS/DFS problem. Interviewer was nice but seemed disinterested. He was obviously doing work the entire time.
   
   Onsite introduction: there was supposed to be a pre-onsite discussion with a recruiter, who was a no show.
   
   Onsite 1: hard string manipulation question. I came up with a brute force solution but couldn't think of the greedy optimization in the allotted time. The interviewer wasn't necessarily bad, but he provided zero guidance the entire time, which lead me to believe that his only data point is whether I could actually solve the problem on my own.
   
   Onsite 2: design question. The interviewer started by simply saying "design X", and I started by approaching it as a system design question. Within a few seconds of me trying to pinpoint requirements, he interrupted by saying "no, that's not what I meant. I want to focus on class design." I then started coming up with some basic classes, and he interrupted me again to say "no, don't discuss implementation details at all. Only think about APIs." So I started focusing on the APIs of the classes. Then he interrupted again and said "that's not what I want. How will you handle this on the frontend?" I started talking about how the frontend could consume my change. "No, I want you design the APIs." So I went back to the APIs.
   
   You get the point. This guy genuinely interrupted me every couple of seconds to rescope the question, and any time I tried asking a clarifying question, he'd look up, repeat what I had just said to him with a smirk, and say "let's do something else." I don't consider myself an angry person, but I was genuinely considering walking out at this point, which I've never considered in any prior interview. By the time we reached an agreement (only discuss the object-oriented design, no implementation details), he criticized my design by pointing out that it wouldn't work due to a probable implementation detail. This entire round was a disaster from start to finish, and I don't think I've ever been this upset after an interview. The interview concluded with me asking him some questions about his work, which just caused him to giggle and say something like "just ask a senior dev on your team." I have zero idea how people this asocial can slip through the cracks at top companies, but this guy somehow managed.
   
   Onsite 3: behavioral. This interviewer was the best. She showed up on time, asked respectful questions, and was generally pleasant to talk with. I think this interview went well. She mostly asked about my internship experience.
   
   Onsite 4: data structure design question. Pretty simple question that is very similar to LRU cache. I gave an optimal answer within a few minutes, coded it, tested, and it worked. The interviewer was okay, but he blatantly told me that my solution wouldn't work and that I shouldn't rush through my implementation without being sure that it made sense. I argued that my code would work, so we ran it, and it worked. He seemed upset and, in the last five minutes of the interview, he asked a hard follow-up that assumes a knowledge of distributed systems. I thought the interview was going well up until this point.
   
   Onsite outro: there was supposed to be a post-onsite debrief with a recruiter, who was a no show.
   
   Thoughts: I had never experienced the culture at Uber before these interviews, and I've gotta say: it's bad. The interviewers typically range from disengaged to combative, neither of which are justified. Everything, from the slow recruiters to the unprofessional interviewers, screams red flag about this company. I will never consider interviewing here again.
   

   Interview

   Leetcode mediums and hards having to do with strings, arrays, hashmaps, sorting, searching

   Answer Question