Polite and open people. They hire hundreds of coders. The interview process was flawed. Be careful - sporadic smell of dog *iss across their dog-friendly office.
For screening we had a 1-hour coding interview with one of their engineers. Then I was invited to the on-site interview.
Currently Procore is hiring a lot, but probably mostly mid-level coding positions - according to Department of Labor their average pay is ~130k. I noticed a ten of parking places designated for the candidates. Considering that Procore even doesn't know what team the candidate will get to, I guess they are merely increasing the head count. Maybe just to inflate the stock price, when going public - IDK. Anyway, in a couple of years there will be waves of lay-offs.
I was picked by the the recruiter - she briefly showed me the campus. Noticed, that people had trouble finding parking spots. The office looks ok, however the dog-friendly practice takes its toll - some rooms have smell the scent of dog *rine. So if you're an employee, be prepared that your clothes and hair might smell after the working day.
Then we had like 4 hours of on-site interviews. Which was almost a failure on Procore side.
1) It started with an ice-breaking round with all my future interviewers. Well, not really - one was absent, because he was at a different interview (did I mention, that they hire insanely?).
2) The next round was about coding. However, the interviewer could not connect my laptop, bc he didn't know their wi-fi password.
3) Interesting, that the interviewer was not comfortable with the task. I.e. when asked why the constructor had that strange signature, he literally replied "I don't know. I had (!) to take this task; usually I give the fuzzy search one, but you already did it.". I hope the interviewers can come more prepared to the interviews.
4) Also the interviewer of a competitive-style coding task asked for an explanation why I was using MAX_NUMBER constant instead of a boolean flag. It's a regular trick in competitive coding solutions to have just one comparison instead of two. The interviewer was a nice guy, but I hope Procore can choose more suitable people for the types of interviews they are conducting, if they have ones.
5) At this point I wondered: do they require their CTO to pass the coding task as well? It's just nonsense to require a candidate on a senior leadership position (Principal Engineer) to do competitive coding under a time gun. That's not how the person on that role works.
6) Another warning signal was that I applied to the position of Principal Frontend Engineer, but nobody was actually checking frontend skills or related experience!
7) And one more - Procore has a problem of titles inflation. My next interviewer was the person that came to Procore as a very Junior QA engineer 3 years ago (her words), and had a crazy career since then - now she's a Senior QA. Yes, in 3 years...
8) This round was fully broken. Her question was about a hard situation in my career. Using a single case and looking from the 3 years of experience she was trying to judge two decades of experience...
9) Oh, btw, they thought I was a robot, which doesn't get tired on hungry. The interviews were scheduled back to back, without any ability to get even a snack.
10) The next round was related to soft skills and leadership - it was the only decent and productive one, as the manager was skillful.
11) The manager confirmed that nobody knows what team the candidate will get to. Yes, they are hiring a very senior person to help them develop frontend, but they don't even know the team to place him to.
12) Title inflation again - the manager mentioned, that some of their principals get into a team as small as 2 people. So now you know what amount of skills Procore's "principal SE" title has, if he is leading just a single person...
13) The final interview was about system design, in particular it was focused on backend stuff + data flow. Did I mention, that I was applying for a frontend specialization? I had lot of experience with backends as well and was able to do the design. And they don't vary the questions - see other interview reports - same task in a lot of those. This showed how boringly fixed the whole process was.
14) One of the interviewers was actually not suitable for his role - he was too shy and had hard times talking. I had to make the interview less stressful and let him relax.
Overall the day was useless for me, as I didn't see the team, didn't have much understanding of the tasks, and felt like I was just one more "item" on a conveyor of candidates.
In a couple of days the recruiter called to tell that I was not fast enough with coding. I giggled internally, we said "good bye" both feeling, that the outcome was correct. They needed a coder to code fast, so I didn't fit. I needed a company that would value wisdom and specialization - so Procore didn't fit.