Galatea Associates LLC Associate (Software Developer/Consultant) interview questions

Phone Interview, which primarily covered my resume. Went over a basic technical question which referenced knowledge of data structures. Two onsite interviews -1st was maybe 1hr of being introduced into to the financial setting for a technical problem, followed by 1hr of time to design a solution to that problem, followed by 3 hours to code your solution. Thought it was cool that I got a $10 gift card to Au Bon Pain for lunch, I noticed that most of the employees looked young (lots of 20 somethings) and many were wearing jeans. The environment was very open, in the sense that there were no cubicles and most people did not have private offices (most teams appear to work in a clustered area). But anyway, I bet you could most of this type of information in reviews from current/previous employees. They gave me the impression that most people have had a very difficult time with the technical problem (and in truth, it definitely did appear to require a strong problem solving ability). That being said, the actual coding for the solution I developed was not terribly hard and I came close to having a program that would produce a correct solution albeit not terribly efficiently. In my opinion what they appear to be looking for are -That you understand why your design will/will not work -That you demonstrate you know how to design a project in general -That you demonstrate the ability to write code. The solution does not need to be complete in order to achieve this, I think they want to see that your code shows some level of working towards a solution and demonstrates understanding of basic programming concepts/practices. The problem btw involved optimizing your collateral to deals you made (you want to satisfy all the deals in the cheapest way possible while borrowing as little as possible). -2nd was an opportunity to talk to a few employees, and the founding partners, to learn about the job and the work environment. They emphasized that this isn't a 100% coding position, something to definitely keep in mind from the beginning. Also, there aren't separate QA/deployment engineers which has it's pros and cons. There wasn't too much stress in this interview, got asked a few questions about my career aspirations (and some other similar typical interview type Qs) while getting the opportunity to flesh out any of my own concerns. At the end of the day, I think the company and the people seemed like a winning combination and felt reasonably interested in the actual position. To top that, they offered a strong salary/benefits package that exceeded my asking price and expectations which obviously worked well for them. I expect to be starting sometime in the next few weeks =).