Status : Junior, BSE CS, Top 10 CS School
Position : Software Engineering Intern at Uber
Location : San Francisco, California
Overview
The interview process started off when I emailed a recruiter at Uber with my resume and a short description of why I wanted to work there. The recruiter got back to within 2-3 days and set up a first round phone screen. After the first round screen, my recruiter called me 2 days later and set up a final round phone screen. After the final screen, my recruiter emailed me 2 days later to set up a phone call to discuss next steps. During that phone call, he verbally gave me the offer.
First Round Phone Screen (1 hour):
It started off with the interviewer introducing himself and explaining a bit about his background and his role at Uber. Afterwards, he asked me some standard behavorial questions – “tell me more about yourself” and “why Uber”.
The interview then consisted of two technical questions, both described below:
- https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-two-sorted-lists
- Given a function stub HTTPRequest(), write a wrapper around the function that limits the rate at which this function can be called to at most 10 times per second
After these two questions, I didn’t have any time left so I couldn’t ask the interviewer any questions.
Final Round Phone Screen (45 minutes)
This interview was very similar to the first one, except I only had 1 technical question. After learning about the interviewer’s background and work at Uber, we went straight to the technical question.
Afterwards, I had enough time to ask the interviewer some questions I had.
The Offer
Salary :
- $43.26/hr, with overtime pay
- max 10 hours a week, to be negotiated with manager
Perks :
- max 10 hours a week, to be negotiated with manager
- round trip flights from home (North America) to internship location
- up to $75 in baggage covered
- free meals (3x a day) and snacks
- 17% discount on all Uber products
- $1000/month (pre-tax) housing stipend
- free monthly Uber credits (15 * avg. fare in home city)
- group medical/dental/vision benefits
- pre-tax commuter benefits
- $50/month phone reimbursement
My Thoughts
I want to start off saying that I can only speak for myself and that what happened to me is not necessarily standard across the board for Uber’s recruiting practices. Additionally, I also kept the interview descriptions above as objective as possible. However, compared to my experiences with other companies, I have to concede that my process with Uber was subpar, to say the least.
During the second problem of my first round phone screen, my interviewer told me in the middle of the question (while I was coding it out) that he had to step out, and promptly left the room for approximately 5 minutes. Afterwards, he came back, and then after another 5 minutes, he suddenly told me that time was up without any warning (he had forgotten to keep track). Since I was still coding, I was thrown off and didn’t really know how to react. He quickly told me thank you and that my recruiter would reach out soon, and then hung up.
My second interview didn’t start off much better. My recruiter had forgotten about the interview, so I had to reach out to HR and remind them about the interview. Because of that, my interview started 15 minutes late. Other than that, the interview was like any other coding interview.
On the day of my call with my recruiter after my second interview, my recruiter also forgot about our call. To be fair, he said the calendar event was hidden under other events had on his calendar, which I understand. The call went fine, but there were other times in the future where he forgot some important details of our previous calls (e.g. that he had already given me the offer!).
This is not meant to vilify my recruiters, interviewers, or Uber. They’re all humans and we make mistakes. I wanted to share my experience so that others who might have experienced a similar process know that they aren’t alone, and to advise them not to take too much stock into this. Obviously, it would be nice for all interviews to go smoothly, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen, and it doesn’t mean the company is a bad place to work at. In the conversations I had with my intern mentor and other members of the company since my interview process, I’ve been very pleased at the respect and consideration I’ve received. One bad recruiting experience doesn’t make or break a company, but it’s important to know that these things can (and do) happen.
tl;dr: sometimes interview experiences can be poor but they doesn’t mean a company is bad