I applied online. I interviewed at Gem in Apr 2024
Interview
This was for the entry level fullstack engineer role. They reached out to me within a few days after I submitted my application online.
First round was a 1-hour "data structures and algorithms" interview - not exactly leetcode, but overall straightforward and not difficult in any means.
The onsite was in-person in SF (if you're local), consisting of a 1-hour values interview, 2.5-hour fullstack project, lunch with the team, 45-min product architecture discussion, and a wrap up discussion with the CTO.
The values interview was a pretty standard behavioral. The fullstack project was definitely a curveball - they told me I didn't need to have any experience with the languages they were using (React, Python, Graphql), but it definitely required some affinity with those languages. I ended up "not implementing enough" of it, and they also told me that I should have talked to the interviewer more during process, while the interviewer told me the opposite during the interview - that I didn't need to explain my thinking or discuss much with him. The project was just to implement a calendar scheduling system, with provided skeleton code. The product architecture discussion was discussing the architecture of the project, and in hindsight you needed to have detailed pre-existing knowledge about HTTP requests or GraphQL requests, and be able to describe the exact interaction between the front and backend services. As a new grad, I did not know what exactly they wanted me to describe, as it was extremely open-ended and I had not done system design interviews before either. I was not given the proper resources to prepare.
I would say the people there seemed nice and very smart, but my onsite was very non-standard compared to all the other interviews I've done, and I got screwed over by things I was not told to prepare for. Whole process was very speedy though, finished within 2 weeks.
I applied through university. I interviewed at Gem (San Francisco, CA) in Nov 2022
Interview
It was an all day interview - where they asked me to work in their actual code base. They did provide an Uber Eats gift card for lunch but overall I felt it was far longer than needed to make a decision about a candidate
1 hour code exercise that is probably better off as a homework. Interviewer is inexperienced.
Not a leetcode exercise but that doesn't mean it's easy. I wouldn't pass it as difficult either. It's more a tedious exercise that involves a trick.
Their platform is nice but ultimately for the candidate, it doesn't replace emailing updates. Maybe it is better for recruiters, it is a recruiting tool after all!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
just look up 112013_challenge_136_intermediate for question and answer