I applied online. I interviewed at Blizzard Entertainment (Irvine, CA) in Jun 2017
Interview
It took about 2 weeks to first hear back from someone, and my initial phone screen was about 2 weeks after that. It was half behavioral (talking about past job experiences) and half standard technical questions (algorithm runtimes, etc).
It took a week to hear back, and I was given a 4-hour at-home coding test. It should be pretty simple for anyone with a few years of experience. I did 'extra credit' since I finished the initial problem in 2 hours, which may have helped.
After another 3 weeks of waiting, I had my on-site interview. It started with a 2-hour coding test with seemingly simple, yet deep questions - they were easy to answer but tricky to optimize, especially with the timer ticking. Afterwards, an hour was spent going over the answers with 2 lead engineers. This part was really enjoyable, as we were able to discuss each question and how it could be done better and more efficiently. It's a way for you to explain what you were thinking, and learn a few things yourself, which is much better than just getting a "no" and going home. After the technical interview was a lunch interview with management, an interview with producers, and an interview with peers. These were all roughly the same personality-type questions about how you approach problems and what you've been doing at your past jobs, etc. As this was a UI-related role, there was UI discussion about the game team I was interviewing for. Overall the whole process took about 7 hours.
It was a great interview process, but it took about twice as long as I had hoped. Expect to wait at least a week in between all conversations for scheduling. At the end I was called and told what the team liked and disliked about me and why they wouldn't be moving forward, and their feedback matched up exactly with how I felt (I should have applied to a non-senior position for a significantly higher chance). I'll probably try to apply again in a few years.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What are 3 words your co-workers would use to describe you?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Blizzard Entertainment (Irvine, CA) in Aug 2016
Interview
First I had a Phone interview with the Recruiter. After this he put me in a pool for many different jobs. I had a group phone interview with 2 leads from 2 different teams. After this process, I was flown out to Blizzard HQ for a series of interviews on campus in Irvine, CA. In the morning I took a Software Engineering Computer based test with questions in the Specific Domain of my skill set. Then I had a Lunch Interview which was a 2 on 1, 2 guys from 2 different teams once again. After lunch I had 2 sets of interviews which were both 2 on 1 interviews. Each person in each interview being from a different team. I feel my interview was somewhat unique since I was interviewing for 2 jobs at once.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Blizzard Entertainment (Irvine, CA) in Mar 2013
Interview
My interview process consisted of 2 parts.
The first: the phone interview with a developer in similar role. It took 30 minutes to pass through all the questions. The questions were not difficult but touched variety of programming topics.
The conversation went well and I proceed to the second part.
The second: home programming task. This surprised me a lot as from the first glance required ~16 hrs of development, but actually took overall 24-30. I spent all the weekend and started to regret that I event started this interviewing process. I suppose that this is sufficient to give several hours assignment to check the skills. Investing such enormous input of time also doing complex projects at work is just unacceptable.
I submitted my solution on time, and was informed to wait for a week... One week passed, another one... silence.
At last I wrote a note to check what's going on and finally got a reply from recruiter after several days, that unfortunately the visa cap is reached and they are not accepting international applicants. Not a word about the skill test result etc.
I believe that the internal atmosphere in the company is seen from communication with recruiters, and experience with recruiters in this company is one of the worst so far.
I would not recommend anybody to apply unless you have a lot of time to waste.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
All questions were mostly moderate but from a variety of topics to check general comprehension. Like how jvm works, or what happens when url is submitted to a browser bar?