I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Bloomberg in Dec 2022
Interview
Overall I had a very strange and IMO unprofessional technical screen. The interviewer focused the interview on my undergraduate education instead of my relevant experience, despite me being 5+ years out of school. Interviewer was also quizzing me on my C/C++ trivia and did not leave enough time for the LeetCode question. The interviewer was also discouraging me from using my preferred language because they were not familiar with it despite being told by recruiter emails that the interview and the position would be language agnostic.
First round was with HR, who were helpful and transparent around details including process, salary range and job expectations. Had a second-round technical screen for one hour. Started with questions around experience followed by a coding problem. I found it challenging but the interviewers were polite, helpful and fair. Unfortunately did not make it through to the virtual onsite, but the process was fair and appropriate to the role.
Terrible communication. Got passed between 3 different recruiters all of whom gave specific dates for updates and blew past them. Descriptions of what would be covered in the interviews are wholly inaccurate (don’t bother reading the PDF they sent to “prep” you, almost none of it came up in any of the 3 interviews I did with them.)
Interviewers themselves were decent but clearly had exact “right” answers they were looking for. What’s the point of a leetcode question where there’s only one way to implement it? What’s the point of a system design interview where you’re having a candidate parse through a complex system that they clearly already know everything about and are just looking for 1-2 EXACT modifications to check off their boxes? Was there even a right answer? I genuinely don’t know what this company was looking for. Waste of time, waste of effort, waste of resources. Avoid, avoid, avoid