I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Groupon in Aug 2013
Interview
The recruiter called me, as if she worshipped me, and then had me talk to a junior person. I answer with a correct solution, but maybe not the solution they had thought out for the few months or years that they have been using this question. The guy told me somebody will get in touch with me. The recruiter never called. I emailed her and asked her if there was any update after a few days. She didn't even reply. The new era of people.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some technical question that they have studied and re-studied and have the most optimal method on a paper while hoping you figure the most optimal answer in 20 minutes as well.
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Groupon (San Jose, CA) in Nov 2011
Interview
an in house recruiter called me and arranged for a tech phone interview. On the phone interview I answer most question decently, for example, at least to be able to give a working solution within a couple of minutes. I did ok, judging from about at least numerous interviews I did for the past 20 years. But the in house recruiter didn't reply, no phone call, no email. I email her asking how it was, and there was no reply either. So it is a typical, if they need you, you are gold, if they don't need you, you are trash.
I interviewed at Groupon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2015
Interview
They do two phone screens before inviting you onsite, and the phone screens consist only of coding problems in Coderpad (no conversation). In fact, there was no conversation with anyone in the entire process (not even a recruiter). I sensed that the engineers get stuck on phone screen duty because they both seemed disinterested from the start. There was no back-and-forth discussion at all. As I was thinking through the problems aloud, both told me that they preferred not to influence my thought process and would therefore make no comments. One of them asked me at the beginning: "Do you want to tell me about yourself?", and after I began talking I realized he wasn't really interested in the answer, so I stopped after 30 seconds to give him an escape, and he said, "OK, that's fine, here's the coding question." I greatly prefer technical interviews that emphasize the collaborative element of talking through a problem with your potential future colleagues, with whom you can debate the various ways to solve it. Groupon's process is extremely un-collaborative, and it sent me a signal that Groupon was not a good match for me. Fortunately, they are the exception, and I experienced much better phone screens and coding exercises with other companies.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Write a simple RegEx parser function that handles only the operators * (0 or more) and + (1 or more), and returns true if the provided string is a match. Signature: boolean isMatch(String regex, String input).
Example: regex = a*b+ce, input = bce, return true
Example: regex = a*b+ce, input = ace, return false
Example: regex = a*b+ce, input = abcee, return false