I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Netflix (Los Gatos, CA) in Jul 2016
Interview
2 phone calls prior to anything technical, 1 with recruiter another with hiring management, these calls are meant to learn about each other outside of technical skills; good to see they are doing it instead of just jumping right into some brain teasers like some other companies do.
Then 1 technical phone screen, it covered a fair amount knowledge that's relevant to the job, as well as a coding exercise via collabedit. The interviewer was kind enough to send me feedback directly afterward upon request, candid feedback is real here.
Then first onsite round, 2 technical interviewers and 2 management interviewers. I ended up stopped here due to my technical skills not meeting the need. The technical questions asked were fair given they are very frank about looking for experienced candidate, it's natural that some questions you just can't answer because you haven't deal with those problems before or haven't used a certain aspect of a language. It was pretty heavy on multi threading and cover a wide spectrum of Java programming skills.
In the end, the recruiter call me up and deliver the bummer new era in person rather than just an email, that was also nice.
Overall it was a very positive experience for me, I have less doubt about the company culture after the interview, they do care a big deal about it, which is reflected by their interview process. And their culture is obviously not for everyone.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Multi threading / concurrency / distributed computing
Seeing the URL shortening service design question caught me off guard at first, but it turned out to be a lucky moment. Just a few days prior, I had practiced a similar architecture problem on PracHub, so I felt somewhat prepared to tackle scalability and data consistency aspects. The process included a recruiter screen, followed by a technical interview focused on system design. Overall, the questions were manageable, but I didn't end up receiving an offer, which was disappointing. The experience taught me a lot, though.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a URL shortening service (similar to bit.ly). What components would you include in your architecture, and how would you handle scalability and data consistency?
The Netflix interview loop is intense and lives up to its reputation. The recruiters are great, but the technical bar is absolute top tier. After a technical phone screen, the virtual onsite consisted of two deep system design rounds, a practical coding round, and very heavy behavioral rounds focused purely on their Culture Memo. They do not care about how many LeetCode hards you have memorized. They care about how you reason through scale, failure, and ambiguity.
Recruiter screen high level discussion.
Tech phone screen live programming exercise.
Virtual onsite, 3 tech rounds two culture/behavioral.
For mine it was like an out-of-body experience, except when I turned to look it wasn't a body at all; it was a plane. Watched it take off, seemed like maybe the pilot hit the throttle a little hard trying to reach cruising altitude and then.. dunno, maybe he dropped his cigarette under the seat or there was a bee in the cockpit or something because next thing you know he's flailing around while I watch the plane tumbling, helplessly aghast as a wing shears off from the stresses he's inducing. No survivors.
But seriously, good interview process. Very helpful recruiter team that will spend time detailing the process and expectations. Exercises are very realistic applied engineering stuff, not brain teasers or obscure algorithms or stuff you haven't done since college. Interview process may be different across the org so YMMV. I interviewed with the Content and Business Products side of the house (i.e., tools for studio, production, not streaming to end users) and the coding, sys design, and data modeling rounds all reflected that.
My advice to you: study the OSS software they publish, know your stuff and *stay calm*.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a time when you had conflict with someone outside your group
