I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Agoda (Bangkok) in Jun 2018
Interview
I am writing this interview process just to warn other people.
First, a recruiter from Agoda contacted me a while ago. I asked her about the salary, no response. She's just saying that depends on the hiring manager, and I need to discuss that with the hiring manager (HM). I told her I'd like to talk to HM and she gives various excuses not to arrange a meeting/interview.
Later on, I was contacted by a 3rd party recruiter. I asked about the salary range, and she asked me my expected salary; I told her what I'm expecting. She said that's OK and within their budget. This is very important, this salary was 6 figure salary per month in USD. The reason why I asked is, because I have seen positions advertised around this much by other 3rd party recruiters hiring for Agoda.
Anyway, she submitted my resume, and Agoda approved for interviews. At that time recruiter also asked me to submit my salary requirement in an email. So I thought they accepted my salary requirement by proceeding further.
I had a phone interview scheduled with engineers. I passed those interviews. Then I had another interview scheduled with the hiring manager.
This is where things get interested. The hiring manager asked my salary expectation during this interview. I told him that my salary expectation range (just like I told to the 3rd party recruiter). He said I'm asking above their range. I asked what the range is and he told me 100-170k THB per month. He said he will talk to HR and if they can do an exception for me. I agreed on that.
Then I got the response saying HR refused exception so they'll be sticking with 100-170k THB range.
I can understand that this range is EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD for Bangkok market; but there are alternative locations where cost of living is similar/cheaper than Bangkok, yet you can still earn this salary or greater. So therefore I strongly recommend everyone, to schedule their first interview with the hiring manager to sort out the expected salary before anything else.
I also did discuss this with the 3rd party recruiter, as to why they said OK in the first with my expected salary range. The answer was, it was the 3rd party recruiter's misunderstanding with the salary range (I don't know how is that even possible). But there you go. So if you do have any recruiter advertising for more than 170k THB; do make sure you ask them if they've got anyone that they know they helped them to hire at that rate. If not just walk away (or accept that the salary range will be 100-170k THB)
I also give thumbs up for the overall interview just purely that all the interviewers (engineers and hiring managers) were really nice people.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Agoda (Bangkok) in Aug 2018
Interview
I applied for the position on their website and was contacted by the recruiter after 1 day. The recruiter told me that the role I applied for was filled already and suggested another role to me. The role was good for me so I proceeded with it.
The recruiter was quick and scheduled my skype interview on the day after tomorrow with the development manager. The interview was of general/technical discussion type including topics such as threading, the output of code, what I know about Agoda and my interest interests. The following day, I received a "Take Home Test" involving threads and it was to be completed in 7 business days (10days). I submitted it on the 8th day (I worked on it for about 30hours).
Five days after submission I received an email from the recruiter saying that I was still under consideration and give time until next week to give me the result of "Take Home Test". I quickly replied and after 45mins the recruiter emailed that the feedback was good and scheduled another Skype interview in the next week.
This interview was with a Senior Software Engineer (Team Lead) and it was much more technical than the first one. Questions were related to load balancing and data structures. This time the got back to me after only 2 days and invited me to Bangkok for face to face interviews. The whole process of booking a ticket, getting a visa and then flying to Bangkok took me 25 days.
I had a total 8 interviews in two days while I was in Bangkok. Most of the interviews were with development managers. Questions were mostly related to the algorithms such as sorting, searching and some of the questions were related to designing the system, I thought I did well in 5 of the interviews and in 3 I came up with only a partial solution (Evidently not, I didn't get an offer). I got rejection email after 2 working days and no feedback was provided.
Overall, most of the interviewers were nice and spoke politely. However, I found two of them not interested and very serious(No jokes, no smile) and used a phone during the interview which I found little disrespecting (Maybe it is acceptable in their culture so could be just a bad judgement on my part).
Strange things:
1. The office was very quiet when I went in for the interview. There were about 50 people in the room and it was quiet.
2. This is the strangest situation I have ever encountered (can be considered funny). Before the start of the interviews on the first day, I was waiting inside the office in front of the information desk and I asked the person behind the desk if I could use the restroom and they told me to wait and then went inside and came back after 5-10 mins and told me that I could use the restroom. I felt they went in to get a permission.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the difference between ArrayList and LinkedList.
I applied online. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Agoda in Jan 2018
Interview
The experience is great and precious. There are a lot of problems solving questions which are rather interesting and a good revision as well but the company is focusing more on java specified.