I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Shopify in Feb 2021
Interview
It was an overall good experience interviewing with Shopify. All people involved in the process were friendly and professional. The process was slow but steady with next steps happening at consistent intervals (took about five weeks total):
- They scheduled a one-hour code pad technical screening within a week of receiving my application. The code challenge was pretty basic and didn’t take long, so left ample time for conversation with the interviewer.
- A one-hour “Life Story” interview with a recruiter was scheduled about a week later; this was basically talking through my resume. The conversation sometimes stalled on details about early career experiences, so more recent and relevant experiences felt a bit rushed at the end – be proactive about moving this conversation along to relevant topics.
- A few days later, they reached out to schedule a final interview (3.5 hours + breaks). This final interview had three parts:
1) Technical problem solving presented a fairly standard application architecture question framed as a Shopify feature. The question involved the usual suspects of modeling, workflow, and data storage. The trickiest part was really just communicating using a google doc in place of a whiteboard.
2) Pair programming presented a fairly straightforward algorithm challenge, although the requirements were rolled out in stages. I began to solve the first stage using a fairly simple approach, but was stopped because it wouldn’t fulfill later requirements that hadn’t been given yet (this was super confusing). The final scope of the problem was highly solvable, although the session as a whole didn't feel very productive with mutual impressions of sloppiness.
3) Technical deep dive was a standard show-and-tell segment; pick something interesting and explain it. The interviewer was sharp and asked good questions without anything divisive.
I applied online. I interviewed at Shopify (Berlim) in Mar 2021
Interview
I applied through the Career portal after seeing an ad on linkedin. I got invited for a technical screening round directly without any conversation with HR. They give information on what to expect during the interview. The screening happened quickly and knew of decision in 24 hours. Based on the expectations provided in the link prior to the interview you need to solve the given problem.
The interviewer was from Canada and I was interviewing for a Berlin role. The interviewer didn't know that it was my first face to face interview with shopify without initial HR screening. So he was trying to break the ice and gave some info about the company for first 10 mins.
Then for next 45 mins he gave me a coding exercise to be done over coderpad.
He started off saying that the problem was extremely simple and nothing too complicated and that he wants to just see my coding abilities. As mentioned in their link, they also said they are looking for how well I collaborate. I asked a couple of clarifying questions before proceeding. So I explained my thought process and presented my option and he didn't say anything other than yeah sounds good. I asked if I should start coding and he said yes. Halfway through I was explaining and told him to let me know if he thinks I am rambling and not clear on what I am trying to say. He looks again at my code and was like yeah yeah I *think* I understand, keep going.
And then I was stuck and I was asking I am not sure what I am doing wrong here. He absolutely had no track of what direction I was going in and was just lost. When I asked for hints, instead of driving me away from the wrong direction I was going in, he gives me an approach based on the solution he already knows about. Now which means I have to reset my current thought process and start over again. And then I thought, oh wait, it doesn't look like the solution is as straightforward as he said at the beginning of the interview. And this made me even more nervous when getting stuck and overall I failed to complete the exercise.
Another thing was, he kept looking on a different side of the screen and every time I asked a question he would turn his head, meaning he didn't really seem engaged in the interview and wasn't collaborating.
In my opinion, I think he just setup incorrect expectations right from the start and didn't really try to understand what I was proposing and collaborate with me.
I have conducted several interviews myself and I know that if I can't follow what the candidate is trying to do and steer them in the right direction, it means I wasn't paying enough attention and collaborating enough.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
It was typical algorithm question. To perform search in an array.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify (Toronto, ON) in Apr 2017
Interview
My interactions with the recruiting staff were great. We had a video call and everything was very exciting if lite on details.
After that when I started speaking with members of the actual engineering organization I was shuffled from interview to interview, my questions about the compensation range of the position were dodged and I ultimately decided not to continue without that information.