Tripadvisor Software Engineer I interview questions

It started with a written question through the recruiter that asks about some general programming concepts, followed by a phone interview, and two afternoons of 1:1 interviews with peers, hiring manager, director and VP of engineering. The first day of interviews were all with peers and hiring manager, and were mostly technical interviews. The second day was spent with potential colleagues, director and VP of engineering, and of course the hiring manager, and were much less technical and focused on their development practice and philosophy. The people are very friendly, smart and motivated, and the overall atmosphere is relaxed. It feels like a great place to work.

A technical recruiter found my resume on my website, contacted me and set up a phone screen for me. The phone screen lasted one hour, consisting of three algorithm questions, with difficulty level gradually increasing. Then I did two onsite interviews. The first on-site interview round consisted of six 1:1 interviews (five technical interview and one technical-recruiter interview); each lasted about 45 minutes. The second on-site interview round consisted of 3 technical interviews and following the technical interviews on that day I was made an offer. For all the on-site technical interview questions, about 80% are algorithms/data structures (some interviewer gave a series of questions and asked me to code some of the algorithms I proposed; some interviewer gave one complex problem and asked me to design the algorithm and code); about 10% are OOP principles (e.g., when to use interface and when to use abstract class) and CS domain knowledge (e.g., how does insertion in B+ tree work); the rest are probability analysis and brain teasers. I was also asked to give suggestions to improve the functionalities of TripAdvisor website. Technical-recruiter interviews are more like happy chatting, letting me know more about the company, than asking me to answer questions. The people I interviewed with are intelligent and energetic. The work environment is great: spacious work space, huge computer display, free lunch, snackbar. There is chessboard, rockband, wii and ps3 in the entertainment area. They have shuttle buses to connect between the company and Newton Highlands T station.