I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify (Montreal, QC) in Apr 2019
Interview
This first interview was a phone interview with a recruiter. She was really nice and I enjoyed my talk with her. It was a really high-level interview, just to know if the position would be a possible fit with me. I guess that interview is more to filter out candidates who didn't really had a look at the position and just randomly sent their CV.
The 2nd and 3rd interview were at Shopify Office.
The 2nd interview was an 1h talk with the recruiter, called the 'Life story'. The recruiter was really nice and our discussion was enjoyable. I'm not sure how they can decide if an employee will fit at Shopify based on this discussion though.
The 3nd interview was a coding challenge with another developer watching you code. I found this interview to be really awkward and stressful. Most companies I know don't do this kind of interview because they know they can't really see how a programmer code if someone is monitoring them coding. I think interviews should be based on real work situations, and AFAIK, you'll never need to code with someone watching over you in actual job. Nevertheless, the interviewer seemed like a great guy, even though he doesn't seem interested in me at all once he saw I had a hard time coding in front of him.
I received an email a week later telling me they would not continue the process with me. They told me I could still apply online if I found other positions that would interest me, which was kind of weird to say, considering that they knew I was a developer, so the only position I could apply was developer. The email felt a lot like copy/paste.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Code a function that will calculate a cart total price, based on various items prices and conditional discounts based on items type and quantity.
The interview was intense and definitely exceeded my expectations. The technical rounds were particularly challenging, but I felt prepared. One of the system design questions was about creating a webhook delivery system with various complexities, and I was relieved because I had explored that exact topic on PracHub just days before. After tackling some coding problems, I faced some behavioral questions that tested my thought process. Overall, the experience was demanding, but I was thrilled to receive an offer, which I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a webhook delivery system that retries on failure with exponential backoff. Cover idempotency, ordering guarantees, dead-letter queues, and how you'd handle a downstream consumer that's been offline for hours.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify (Toronto, ON)
Interview
Lots of rounds and meeting multiple team members enjoyable experience and the interviews really ensure that the job is a right fit. There are multiple checkpoints to ensure both parties are on the same page
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Walk through a past technical project you worked on or owned.
Interview process went quickly. The recruiter was very responsive and nice, and made the whole experience 10 times better. The interviewers did not ask impossible questions and focused more on the thought process than the correct answer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first 2 interviews were LeetCode-like questions. Not directly from leetcode, but if you know your data structures you'll be good. 3rd interview I had to prep a design document and share it and they asked questions about the decisions that were made and the rationale behind it.
