Office is ok. Interview process is a complete disaster. Not much care about people - they hire standard units for the army. And very against any remote work - felt like LinkedIn is stuck in old ages.
I applied to a position of Senior SWE at Carpinteria office. They work on integrating the acquired lynda.com website. The life there is calm, developers are working on non-ambitious tasks like daily bugs. The campus is mostly for people who create educational courses, the tech team is small.
Had a screening call in 2 weeks after the application, passed to the on-site interview. The process was slow, and the recruiters were on the edge of being unprofessional. The recruiter ignored the date/times for the calls I was providing, and when speaking just gave a fast-pacing burst of information, with a single aim to hang up ASAP. All the time they were pushing me to tell the list of other companies I'm interviewing with - lying that they knew the schedules, and it would help us to plan our process. This was clearly a BS, I didn't surrender my privacy.
They also stress how much they care about people, but the reality (talks with their engineers, interviewing process) proved otherwise - will mention it below.
They sent me a bunch of marketing emails - about a high honor to work at LinkedIn, how I must prepare to show all my algorithmic skills, how they value people, etc. I guess their phrase that "at lunch you will be assessed by your curiosity and questions" proves the aforementioned care about people - i.e. about the candidate coming for a whole day and trying to have a small break. However, as the organization was horrible, none of the SWEs knew about this assessment, and we just had a normal lunch.
The only positive experience was when they sent me some docs to sign before the interview, and when I was unable to sign one of the improper items, they were flexible enough to skip it. The line was saying that I authorize LinkedIn to get any information about me from anybody on Earth, they don't have any responsibility to store it properly, and can use it for whatever purpose. Be aware of such nonsense, and do not sign it.
The on-site interview consisted of 5 rounds + lunch, and it was a failure. The most funny part is that 4 of 5 ON-SITE interviews were done via VIDEO calls. Such visit didn't have any use for me - I didn't talk with the team. I could do it from home. But they call it an "on-site interview".
The campus looks ok, though cubicles are dark. There's a basic lunch - merely something to make you to not leave the campus. The salaries are on a lower end, as Senior SWEs are unable to afford living nearby, but rather commute 40-60 miles daily. The hiring manager accidentally met me in the morning, but never came to talk and never visited the lunch. As said above - they hire units with some characteristics, not people.
First round was a system design task. Bad organization: the whiteboard was located on the wall orthogonal to the camera, so my interviewer could see it very badly. I did this round well, though.
Second round was an algorithmic coding task. Same struggle with the whiteboard at interviewer's side - I could hardly see anything - so it took a while to copy the drawing to a sheet of paper. One more LOL failure: they didn't even provide me a laptop to code. Had to boot mine, connect it, and then get to the URL the interviewer was using. This showed what kind of professionals work at LinkedIn! The task was about traversing a tree, I suggested a couple of solutions, and implemented the best one. Interviewer assumed I didn't know how to calculate ArrayList expansion amortization cost, but their quality of video conference (another failure) didn't allow us to continue that talk.
Third round was an interview with a manager from New York - he was checking my culture and goals. The interview had no use for me, as he was not aware of the work here in Carpinteria. Just was telling me standard stuff how they care about people. He again pushed me to disclose the other companies I'm talking to.
Fourth round was the only one with a local developer - whiteboard code for a segmentation/allocation task. This went ok, I suggested a number of alternatives, coded bit-mask format.
Fifth round was for tech communication - had to whiteboard and explain a tech task to an engineer via a video call. The connection was bad, but I passed that.
In a week the recruiter called to inform, that I didn't pass due to the first coding task. This was again a burst of the words read from his template with the immediate hang-up. I sent an email asking whether it's possible to re-check that result, because I completed everything and even in a shorter amount of time (remember their fiasco with laptop and whiteboard). But the response was never received. They care much about people, but they don't consider an ex-candidate to be a human.
I guess I got everything I needed to know about LinkedIn.
