I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Uber in Aug 2016
Interview
I applied for a software engineer position online. After about a week, a HR contacted me to schedule a phone interview, mostly questions about my background and interest. Then there is another phone interview with a senior engineer. We talked about some of my experiences and projects, almost nothing technical. Three days later, I got an email saying they want someone with more experience.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Uber (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2015
Interview
Was referred to a recruiter through a friend, and settled on a date for a phone interview.
The phone interview was with someone pretty fresh out of college, and I got the sense he didn't really know what he was doing. The question format was somewhat disorganized, but I was able to pass this round with some pseudo code the interviewer was happy with. The interviewer assumed I was applying for a front-end position and wanted me to code in javascript/angular, when I was applying for a backend position and didn't know any of the languages he was looking for.
On-site, I interviewed with about 5 people before ending the day. Some of my interviewees seemed frazzled when coming in; I got the impression they were pretty stressed out. None of the questions I was asked were particularly hard. The company gives you a laptop to code on for your interview, but interviewers were pretty happy with just coding on a whiteboard instead. None of my interviewers knew the password to the laptop anyway.
I got an offer from Uber, but had the offer revoked when I started asking some questions about what it's like to work there to the manager. I got the impression some of my interviewers weren't really all that happy which raised a few alarms for me. The stock compensation was generous, but the company refused to budge on anything else in a very take it or leave it kind of attitude. It's insulting how they try to come across as doing you a favor when you did all the work in preparing for the interview loop.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Two system design questions, one question where you talk about your former work experience, and two coding questions.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Uber (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2016
Interview
5 individual interviews with different engineers. First with the hiring manager (who would also be your manager), followed by an engineer on your team, then a design interview, then a "bar raiser", and another engineer on your team. They asked pretty standard algorithm questions and asked how I would design UberEats essentially.
The bar raiser interviewer and the design interviewer went pretty terribly (from a manners standpoint). The software designer asked the question and immediately went back to texting on his phone and continued to do so for the rest of the interview. He gave absolutely no feedback of the design choices, and when asked what he thought about it, simply said, "There are many ways to design a webpage".
The "bar raiser" had one of the most condescending people I've ever met. When I asked what he does/what his role was at the company, he said "pretty much everything. Project management, product management, development, person management". He asked that I "solve sudoku", but would keep interrupting me when I thought out loud. Just as I was getting to the right answer (looked it up online afterwards), he stopped me and moved on to the next question. The second question was another question that would take at least several hours to solve. When I stood and thought about it for about 15 seconds, he said "you have to break it down into smaller pieces" (same thing he said about the first question). At that point, I saw that he had already made up his mind; he started talking about something barely related to the problem and started talking about the solution for solving that instead for the next 5 minutes. It had little to do with the original problem and it felt like he asked these questions for his own kicks.
The interviews with the other engineers and the hiring manager were positive; they were very receptive to questions and comments and were straightforward in their questions.