Interview process was lengthy. Had a very standard behavioral first interview with a couple case questions in September, then was given a case study presentation to complete. The third round is an onsite interview in November (!!!). For the most part, everyone was nice. My negative experience comes from 1. The amount of effort and time they require for the entire process and 2. The way they conduct their final interviews.
As for point 1, I spent hours on the case study (15+). This amount of work was 100% not worth it. I spent another 5-10 hours improving it for the final round, only to not be able to even finish presenting during the final round because I was interrupted by so many questions. Also, they take an incredibly long amount of time getting back to you after the case study round, and the final rounds are super days that happen about a month after you get it.
2. The final round. I cannot believe the amount of time that was spent showing off the place, when only 4 out of 20 final-round candidates were going to be given offers. I thought it was incredibly unprofessional that they waited until we were physically in San Francisco to tell us that fact, also. What company limits their options like that, especially when the role is so essential to what they do. The interview took place from 8am to 8pm, with half the day spent listening to presentations, going out to meals, and more "selling points" of the company. As for the interviews, I had some nonsensically specific questions. I prepared for weeks for this interview, only to be asked things like "Teach me something," or "Your DAUs are down 35%. Your installs are down 5%, and your long-term users are down 10%. What's the exact cause of this specific % loss in DAUs." I spent hours playing their games, yet was never once asked how I would improve them. Most interviews started with "which games do you play," and that was the extent of them asking about my gaming knowledge. The rest were about specific KPIs that I had no idea about because I am in college and have not encountered those in my classes or previous internships.
I had one interviewer who was dreadful, the rest (3/4) were very nice. This bad interviewer ended my interview 20 min early (in a 45 total min interview), after asking me the weirdest questions I've ever gotten. One question asked what I would do if people didn't agree with my ideas. I said well I'd show them the data, and she said there is no data (huh???). Next, I said well I'd try to have a civil discussion about why I thought that was the right idea and hopefully my coworkers would back me up. If not, it probably wasn't a good idea. Then, she said well, the answer was that you can use "VIP" testers to test the game and your feature. I was so confused lol, how in the world was I supposed to know about these VIP things. Also, wouldn't getting their feedback be an example of getting data on the feature? The last thing she did was she misunderstood all of my questions and even was condescending in how she answered them. I asked her a question about her experience in PM, and she took that as me not knowing what PM is, and proceeded to write on her laptop presumably to note that I asked her a bad question and don't know what the role is.
Overall, this company has amazing perks and some good employees, but it is still clearly recovering from the times when it was losing money and had terrible culture. The interview process needs to be completely restructured and all interviewers (bar maybe 1) should be retrained.
