I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Sonos
Interview
Contacted by recruiter who works for the company (no outside agency). Had about a 30min discussion about open positions/projects within the company and end goals for said projects. Recruiter then sets up an hour long video chat with a Software Development Manager. Next, I am asked to complete a code challenge. The coding exercise is extremely open ended with no time limits and very vague instructions. It takes a couple of hours to complete. The team that grade the exercises seem to grade things that aren't related to the task. For example, the type of framework you use i.e., Spring, which should be irrelevant and not count towards the score. Even if you come up with a fully-functional and tested REST API for this task, the team will deduct points for things like the number of classes used, which is NEVER stated anywhere within the challenge guidelines. The entire exercise is poorly written and grading of this exercise is even worse. It appears as if they have a QA dept with very little development experience grade the code submissions. The feedback given reflects this. I wouldn't bother interviewing with this company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Q. Code challenge was centered around rate-limiting
I applied online. I interviewed at Sonos (Boston, MA) in Jan 2025
Interview
recruiter call, easy technical interview, then three in depth interviews with team members. They were all very nice except for the boss, who didn't seem to take my experience seriously from the start. Got rejected in the very last round. could be related to their recent layoffs
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a project which you are least proud of
I applied for a React engineer role. During my interview with the hiring manager, I was told that the next step was going to be a coding challenge with another engineer and they will be testing me in React and hacking a project together.
During the coding portion, I wasn't tested in React but instead a LC medium problem. Testing a front-end engineer with LC problems is a complete waste of time in my opinion. I want to add that the interviewer did not seem excited as he didn't properly introduce himself or properly conclude the interview. He just abruptly said, "ok, talk to you later" and ended the call.
Culture here doesn't seem all that great judging by the interview.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Sonos in Mar 2022
Interview
Had a pretty decent experience with the on-site and the engineering team, but a bad experience with the recruiter - ultimately ghosted. It seems that the way Sonos interviews may vary from team to team - I interviewed for a *frontend* team.
Steps:
- Initial call with recruiter. The recruiter was late, and his answers were vague and unhelpful (maybe because he’d only been there for a couple months), and did not make me excited about joining Sonos. He was also confused by some info clearly listed on my resume, and then he gave me questionable advice on it. (I’ve gotten many interviews with other companies, so I don’t think it was a problem.)
- Tech screen - a simple assessment in javascript; the engineer was polite and kind, seemed personable.
- A prep call with the recruiter. He completely forgot about the call, and I had to email him later. When I did get a hold of him, he was not very helpful.
- On-site (split across two days, interviewing with members on the team):
- React exercise - implement a feature in an existing component
- Debugging exercise - fixing js code in browser environment
- Programming exercise (any language, not frontend specific)
- Design / system debugging - troubleshooting an issue in a system (based on the team’s actual architecture)
- Behavioral - 30m chat with manager (a series of quick “tell me about a time” questions)
I liked the team I met with - they all seemed engaged and enthusiastic about the new product they were working on. I thought they had a lengthy but reasonable and creative interview process that tested many different aspects of coding. One of my interviewers remarked that it was unfortunate that all my interview panel only consisted of white males.
Unfortunately, I never heard back from them. The very lengthy and unprofessional experience left with me with a sour taste, which was disappointing because I liked Sonos as a company. The experience with the team was pretty good though, so maybe the engineering culture is still nice to be part of…
