I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Netflix in Jul 2012
Interview
Met the Netflix recruiter at a career fair, and within a week they set up a phone screen. The phone screen was supposed to happen over Skype, but the interviewer just called me instead.
He was very personable, but answered rather vaguely when I asked how they achieve their goal of "HighlyAligned, LooselyCoupled" - he just reiterated the fact that they only hire the technically best of the best...but I didn't see how that addressed the question.
In the end, they were looking for someone with DEEP Java experience, and I had been up front with the recruiter that I was a bit rusty, having worked in a different language for 3 years.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a hash table of objects, iterating takes a constant amount of time, except when it takes much longer? When would that happen?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Netflix (Los Gatos, CA)
Interview
Recruiter contacted me and after the initial conversation she set up a phone meeting with the hiring manager. The hiring manager asked simple database questions like 1 NF, 2 NF and 3 NF and explained about the position. This was followed by an onsite interview: 3 technical and 1 HR round. The technical questions were all whiteboarding questions. All of these went well except the interview with the HR director who was most horrible and condescending person I have ever come across in my life. Her behavior was very bad. This just reflects badly on Netflix and Reed Hastings.
The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Netflix (Los Gatos, CA) in May 2012
Interview
Interview was pretty standard, albeit extensive. First round consisted of a phone screen with the hiring manager. After that was a technical phone screen with a senior engineer. If you make it past those, you'll be invited for a first round of onsite interviews. My first round was with 5 people. Lots of in-depth technical questions directly related to the position you're interviewing for. If you get good feedback from that round, you're invited back for a second round of interviews; mine was with 3 people. More technical questions, but this round was more biased towards personality/culture fit.
They are very upfront about their culture and how it can be 'intense', but other than that, it was a pretty typical high-tech interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Not listing specific interview questions due to confidentiality. Questions related to multi-threading, design patterns, basic web technologies, standard algorithm interview questions. Nothing earth shattering.