The Good(s): My recruiter was amazing. Absolutely world-class recruiter. Very personable, very informative, very responsive.
The Bad(s):
The onsite was divided into coding assessment, recruiter screen, and onsite.
One of the reviews here indicated the following, "bias- a particular tendency, trend, inclination, feeling, or opinion, especially one that is preconceived or unreasoned."
This sentence perfectly described my onsite interview experience with HubSpot. All interviewers were very biased on how they would like their problems to be solved; I felt they were very-closed minded individuals, probably due to the culture of lacking proper interview training, allowing everyone to follow their personal "good judgment." As an applicant, I don't feel that my ideas in the design process were being valued. All interviewers had some form of checklist flow in mind, which made me perceived that they lack creativity and real technical skills. As a company values giving feedback to the applicants, I think HubSpot should start valuing getting feedback from applicants on their interviewers.
System Design round.
The interviewer started out asking about a few "tell me once upon a time..." questions, then got into the system design. The sys design question was designing an URL shortener, a problem they have been using for years. The interviewer was indifferent and emotionless for the majority of the interview. The interviewer also seems to have a particular checklist in mind on how to go about designing the system; he would stop me mid-sentence to diverge focus onto another component of the design all the time, which significantly limits my system design creativity. Another frustrating thing was that my creative solutions were never deep-dived or valued; the most I got was a nod from him on a few suggestions. For most of the interview, the interviewer was so incredibly emotionless both facially and vocally, I could've interviewed with a robot and the result wouldn't changed.
Database Design round.
This round was absolutely the most unfair round to applicants. One of the reviews here again indicated the following, "They will tell you knowing syntax is not important but it will be brought up as necessary if they want to ding you based on the implicit bias." This was also very true in my experience. I made it very clear to the interviewer at the beginning that I have no extensive experience with designing SQL tables or writing SQL queries, but all design problems/scenarios given were based on knowing SQL functionality and syntaxes. An applicant can't possibly know the optimal answers to half of the questions without knowing the in-depth SQL topics they were looking for. The guidance given by the interviewer were also very vague; as someone who has limited experience with SQL, there was no way for me to know whether the interviewer was trying to point out a problem in my table design or query design.
Coding round.
Standard LC midium. Likely the most un-biased round out of all three. I was given the freedom to drive the conversation which allowed to expressed my algorithmic thoughts clearly and spoke out-loud as I coded. Even then, I felt the reason I was given the freedom to drive the conversation was because I gave the interviewer the most optimal solution she had in mind on first try.
Overall, the onsite interviews felt like a mess. The interviewers did not feel like they were capable interviewers as they were too young and lacking technical depth; the questions were somehow only solvable by the exact solutions they had in mind. I wish the interviewers would've been more expressive and more open-minded to applicants' suggestions.