I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify in Sep 2014
Interview
I had applied online and a recruiter got back to me in a couple of weeks. First "interview" was a quick 5 minute call where the recruiter just asked why I was interested, what languages I was familiar with, what my last internship was and if I have any questions. My second interview was scheduled, then rescheduled as the interviewer was double booked. When the interview did happen, it was a 30 minute Skype chat. No technical questions, was just asked about my life story. Recruiter also asked all the same questions from the last 5 minute call (this is the same recruiter), and said I would hear back in a week. More than a week passed, and I reach out to the recruiter and I am told that they moved on with other candidates that "better fit their needs". Also stated that a lot of applicants are hired on their 2nd or 3rd application.
Overall, I felt the interview process does not explore your technical potential. Which is expected as it is a company with a very strong culture. Its hard to pinpoint where exactly one lacked with an interview process such as this as your resume is not discussed, and neither is your technical background.
typical interview process, one round with hr. followed by a 75 min coding interview pair programming with one of the engineers. In the coding interview it was encouraged to use ai.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
create a autocomplete system for search based on a list of search frequencies.
There was a first round with hr followed by a 1hour interview, use of AI was encouraged. Interviewer was not very knowledgeable and I had to discover a solution that she understands
The interview was intense and definitely exceeded my expectations. The technical rounds were particularly challenging, but I felt prepared. One of the system design questions was about creating a webhook delivery system with various complexities, and I was relieved because I had explored that exact topic on PracHub just days before. After tackling some coding problems, I faced some behavioral questions that tested my thought process. Overall, the experience was demanding, but I was thrilled to receive an offer, which I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a webhook delivery system that retries on failure with exponential backoff. Cover idempotency, ordering guarantees, dead-letter queues, and how you'd handle a downstream consumer that's been offline for hours.