I applied online. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Aug 2017
Interview
Applied on 7/27 and was asked for a non-technical phone screener with HR the next day. After speaking with HR, we determined a specific team I would be best suited for.
Then I applied specifically for this new team within Bloomberg. Received a request for a technical phone/code pair (Hackerrank) interview for 8/17. Due to scheduling conflicts, the technical round was moved to 8/18. I was asked about my background and then to solve this problem (in any language): Given two arrays of sorted integers where array A is large enough to fit all elements in both array A and array B, how would you merge the two arrays together in sorted order? (Hint: Double pointers starting at the last element in each array)
After the first technical, I was invited to an onsite interview in NYC on 8/30. Bloomberg was kind enough to pay for airfare, hotel stay (Manhattan->one night), and corporate taxi (airport->hotel). Each technical round onsite involved two senior engineers.
1st Round (Hackerrank - Any language): Maximize stocks values where you must:
-- Buy before you sell
-- Index of input array is the day of stock price
-- Return maximum profit and index of buy/sell
-- (Optional) Think about short selling (selling before you buy)
2nd Round (Hackerrank - Any language): Given a string, remove all matches of 3 or more consecutive chars (Candy Crush style)
-- i.e. ABBBCC - > ACC
-- i.e. ABBCCCB -> A
Theoretical: Design a Browser History log that holds up to n logs
-- No duplicates (duplicate moves to top of list)
-- Implement using list (i.e. queue to hold history) for fast and easy reordering (i.e. addition/removal) (simple pointer reassignments)
-- Implement using hashmap for fast lookup to see if duplicates exist (key -> URL, value -> pointer to index in list)
-- Handle if browser history reaches max n logs
After the two technical rounds, I was escorted out of the building and treated to lunch with two other engineers. At this point I knew I was not going to the final rounds with HR as they took my security badge on the way out.
15
Other Senior Software Engineer Interview Reviews for Bloomberg
Terrible communication. Got passed between 3 different recruiters all of whom gave specific dates for updates and blew past them. Descriptions of what would be covered in the interviews are wholly inaccurate (don’t bother reading the PDF they sent to “prep” you, almost none of it came up in any of the 3 interviews I did with them.)
Interviewers themselves were decent but clearly had exact “right” answers they were looking for. What’s the point of a leetcode question where there’s only one way to implement it? What’s the point of a system design interview where you’re having a candidate parse through a complex system that they clearly already know everything about and are just looking for 1-2 EXACT modifications to check off their boxes? Was there even a right answer? I genuinely don’t know what this company was looking for. Waste of time, waste of effort, waste of resources. Avoid, avoid, avoid
Interviewed with two separate teams. Coding rounds. Leet code style question. The interview went on for 1 hr. Waiting for the next steps. The seem to like link lists and arrays