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My Interview at Uber

233 pointsby akras14over 8 years ago

20 comments

TeeWEEover 8 years ago
I once interviewed at Uber. I told them I was also interviewing at other companies, to see what was available. They told me this was not &quot;the people they where looking for&quot;. And it wouldn&#x27;t be &quot;OK&quot; to say something like that in America. They where looking for people who really want to work at Uber.<p>I got an assignment to build a linked-list in language of choice, with a test-suite. A weird assignment if you ask me. But i build it in Golang and submitted it a day later.<p>After that I didn&#x27;t get a reply for 3 weeks!! I then mailed them asking if they where going to check out my work.<p>2 days later I got a reply, it was OK to continue. At that point my interest for Uber was already gone. If they cant handle candidates well, the company would probably be chaotic inside too.<p>I also don&#x27;t like their arrogance.<p>An old colleague of mine is working at Uber, and he says the working times are flexible, but more than 40 hours per week. And they have over 1000 microservices. And its normal to rewrite them often.<p>To me that seems like a bad architecture.
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fishnchipsover 8 years ago
I interviewed at Uber in Amsterdam and my experience wasn&#x27;t great. They flew me over for just one day (waking up at 5am just to get there on time) and kept me interviewing between 11am and 7pm with no break for food and no food in sight. After that they essentially forced me to take Uber back to the airport once I told them that I just took a train from Schiphol. What&#x27;s funny was that the driver was so upset with the company that he bitched and moaned all the way to the airport.
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PaulRobinsonover 8 years ago
In which somebody who didn&#x27;t want to work for Uber, interviews at Uber, is unimpressed, and they with him, but this realisation is kept secret until a story about Uber culture blows up all over the web over a weekend.<p>By the way, it&#x27;s spelt &quot;suit&quot;, not &quot;suite&quot;. I believe the e on the end has escaped from &quot;belive&quot;, which appears later in the article.
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OoTheNigerianover 8 years ago
Dear Americans,<p>Being expected to tip a person for a service you just paid for is NOT normal!<p>Yes, in the EXCEPTIONAL situation where you want to give a person money for whatever reason, please do so but do not change a default setting for something that warrants it 10% of the time.<p>How does one justify going to a salon, being given a price by the barber, paying it and still be expected to &quot;tip&quot; the person you just paid what was asked for?<p>Uber including tipping will mess up the experience. Period. It will influence ratings. Cos, how would a driver rate 2 passengers with equal service but one tipped $20 and the other $0.<p>We from the rest of the world are very uncomfortable being forced to perform this &quot;optional&quot; task.
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rezashirazianover 8 years ago
Nothing in this article really stood out for me. Anyone who has interviewed in the valley is bound to come across disorganized recruiters, overworked engineers, demanding hiring managers and an overall chaotic environments. This is the norm.<p>The issues raised in Fowler&#x27;s however is not normal and is something that Uber should figure out as soon as possible.
beanerover 8 years ago
This article seems to be capitalizing on the popularity of Susan Fowler&#x27;s blog post earlier today, which was rightfully popular for its outrageousness.<p>This one is just a weird uninformative rant that is mostly just a description of an arduous but not particularly horrible interview day, plus some comments about not liking the app.<p>It doesn&#x27;t contain anything particularly new or insightful or damning about Uber.
simplehumanover 8 years ago
I wonder why the author feels those engineers waste their time compared to Facebook and Google which is all about ads. Is this what they did studied engineering for? To show best ads? Name one person who enjoys ads. Yet I can be you millions who enjoy cheap timely taxi rides.<p>Terrible judgemental article. The author has preconceived notions and wants to capitalize on the Uber hate wave.
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atemerevover 8 years ago
Looks like a regular startup company interview.<p>I have no objections to Uber&#x27;s business model, and a friend of mine earns $5000&#x2F;month being an Uber driver (that&#x27;s in Switzerland, but still impressive -- it helped him a lot when he had financial troubles).<p>Sexism, of course, is unacceptable, but that&#x27;s from another story, not this one.
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khazhouover 8 years ago
TLDR:<p>His interviewers were young and seemed stressed. One guy implied you should work long hours. He realized mid-interview it wasn&#x27;t for him. Finished interview. He feels bad for drivers.
lettersdigitsover 8 years ago
&gt; The driver said that Uber gave him more business, but he didn’t make as much<p>I asked many Uber drivers (outside and inside my own country), and they all LOVED uber (bottom line - more jobs, more money, even if smaller profit margins per job)<p>I think in general it was much more appreciated in third world countries. (And also by me, safety-wise. regular yellow taxi drivers could be extremely dangerous in these places. so many tricks to make on tourists).<p>I truelly cannot remember a negative comment about it.<p>&gt; I was planning to tip him well, but couldn’t find the tip option like the one I’ve seen in the Lyft app<p>I think that the rating system is much more powerful (even economically) than a $$$ tip.<p>A 5-start rating is even better than a $ tip - you will (in the long run, if others rate you high as well) make more jobs (thus more money) if you have a great rating.<p>Same goes the other way around: Giving 1-2 stars is even more criticizing than not leaving a tip - if your average rating is lower you will get less jobs. if it&#x27;s below some threshold - game over.<p>I myself would prefer (if I were an Uber driver) that you just gave me a pampering 5-star rating and then have a nice day :)<p>(edit: new lines) (edit2: responded to a different quote from the article)
underwaterover 8 years ago
It seems weird to me that the author was so uninformed going into the interview. I do everything I can to tip the balance in my favour during a job hunt.
horsecaptinover 8 years ago
There seems to be a conflict in the article. The writer questioned Uber&#x27;s need to pay less in real dollars and more in funny money, but is happy to stick to Lyft &quot;even if it costs me a few extra dollars&quot;.<p>I understand if one company is a better culture fit than another, but if the motivation is to make more money, then wouldn&#x27;t it be better to work for someone who will actually pay more money?
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Kiroover 8 years ago
&gt; I was planning to tip him well, but couldn’t find the tip option like the one I’ve seen in the Lyft app.<p>The best feature of Uber compared to Lyft if you ask me.
diminotenover 8 years ago
I think some of the stuff in this story reminds me of the crazy MBA interview shit someone was telling me about going through just recently.<p>For example, Amazon had a &quot;bar raiser&quot; who&#x27;d be somewhat intentionally offputting and as part of the interview they gauged your response to this person&#x27;s mannerisms. Same with the frequent and seemingly chaotic interview situation. Two different &quot;tactics&quot; meant to determine how you handle unexpected situations.<p>&quot;The Interview&quot; is such terrible black magic, there&#x27;s simply no way these techniques provide reliable predictivity towards someone&#x27;s success in their job. I would <i>love</i> to hear about specific metrics regarding expected vs. actual success, and while I know it&#x27;d be impossible to know how someone would have done had you hired them, you can at least know how well someone did who you did hire, based on your expectations. Like, if someone scores &quot;well&quot; on the &quot;Is it cool if I take my shoes off during this?&quot; stress test, does that actually make them more likely to be a good employee?<p>I currently believe no one in HR knows the answer to that question, though the assumption is largely, &quot;Yes.&quot;
wallabieover 8 years ago
Long post warning - this is just a perspective about shitty HR in the vein of this post, not sexism, like the original Fowler post.<p>Late last year at 10am on a Thursday, I got a call asking if I wanted to interview for a HR position with Uber in Australia. He wanted the position filled ASAP, so we organised an interview for that evening.<p>I had already accepted an offer from another company for a summer internship in software dev, an area I was actually interested in, but I was beguiled by the Uber brand and was practically willing to give up a lot to work for them as a result. I am not interested in HR by any stretch, and believe that HR staff are better put to use removing staples from about-to-be-recycled paper or other more productive ends.<p>I &#x27;passed&#x27; the initial interview and was asked to do the following:<p>- Draft a cold email to a potential hire, with the goal to fill an existing vacancy in the company;<p>- Pass an extensive, three-hour &#x27;data analytics&#x27; test (see: basic-intermediate data manipulation and analysis in Excel) hosted on HackerRank. This was actually fairly challenging because you&#x27;re purposefully time-poor throughout the test;<p>- Create a PowerPoint presentation outlining a plan to target university grads. This was also challenging since if I was given a template with pre-made slide designs, it would be pretty easy. But I designed a slide deck from scratch completely in line with the Uber design guidelines, including typeface, color and other design requirements, on top of my recruitment strategy;<p>- Trawl through their current Uber Careers website and list as many possible ways that it could be improved.<p>So I was given this Thursday night. He wanted the tasks done asap, but I told the recruiter that I had an assignment due Tuesday, and that it would be quite a crunch. He &#x27;relented&#x27; and gave me until Sunday night. As I write this, I realise that he was unabashedly using my enchantment with the company to his favour.<p>I did nothing that entire weekend but work on those items, and handed them all in Sunday evening, right on time, to the detriment of my assignment. I found out later (through a contact in the company, not from the recruiter) that I scored over 80% in the online exam, and that all the other items were very well received.<p>Despite this, I never received anything back from the recruiter at all. Nothing except a boilerplate rejection email, featuring photo of Diversity Hire #1 and #2 laughing over coffee and &#x27;Thank you for your application. However, we cannot proceed with your application at this time...&#x27; The recruiter insisted that they tried to call me (again, I heard this through the contact) but lo and behold, despite being glued to my phone for over a week, my phone didn&#x27;t ring once. The incredible disrespect I felt from this experience will mean that I&#x27;ll never apply to them for any role, ever.<p>Tl;dr - my perspective of Uber is that they are entitled to your best work, and have no intention to reciprocate.
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sokoloffover 8 years ago
&gt; I work at Apixio and we are hiring. Please hit me up if you would like to join us.<p>This seems like an odd juxtaposition with an article detailing the author&#x27;s interview at another company...
plaidturtleover 8 years ago
Poorly written (probably because it was written in a hurry to piggy back on Susan&#x27;s article). This doesn&#x27;t contribute anything new to the conversation.
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_bpoover 8 years ago
The tldr here is that this is a nice recounting of personal experience interviewing with Uber and being frustrated by it, pointing out the many warning signs seen in the interview about a toxic work culture.<p>The post was prompted by the phenomenal writeup by Susan Fowler on her year working with Uber. If you can read only one, certainly read hers. If you can read only two, consider reading Susan&#x27;s twice as it&#x27;s exceptionally good writing. This is a nice (not exceptionally original) personal account of a bad interview experience.
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ar15saveslivesover 8 years ago
I can write the same blog post about onsite interview at Google, which was a horrible 6 hours marathon with people that copying to their notes all that you draw&#x2F;write on whiteboard.<p>Questions&#x2F;problems are pretty lame, btw. Do one geeksforgeeks problem a day, you&#x27;ll be able to crack it in a year.
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cftover 8 years ago
And yet, despite all these politicizing attempts, Uber has essentially transformed urban transportation in the 21st century.
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