I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Peek in May 2024
Interview
- Recruiter screening call
- Interview with an engineering lead. More of a personal/behavioral interview, but will ask about different projects you've worked on, things you've done that you're proud of, how you handle criticism about your work, etc.
- ~4 hour practical take-home coding assessment (no tricky algorithm BS. Just implement some theoretical business logic and be mindful of production impact)
- Wait for assessment to be looked over, turnaround was ~2 days
- Interview with engineers to go over assessment, explain your logic, they ask questions about your thought process, present situations and ask how you'd accommodate those in your code.
- Interview with director of engineering. Very similar to interview with engineering lead. Cover your background, what you're looking for in your career, what sort of challenges you've gone through, mistakes you've made and what you've learned from them, those kinds of things.
They're very much looking for cultural fits. Obviously they want you to have appropriate experience, but Peek primarily cares about maintaining their culture. Everyone I talked to spoke very highly of their coworkers and the environment that management has fostered. Professional growth, cross-pollination, and sharing of knowledge is highly encouraged. If you're passionate about those things and are able to present that passion well, you should get pretty far. Have good questions prepared to ask them in return.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is something you've worked on that you're proud of?
Give an example of a mistake you made, and how you handled that situation.
It was a long process where I had a take home assignment which touched on a domain that they work on and then an in person visit. The recruiter person I spoke to was okay but did not feel like they were an expert in their job.
I felt the company was trying to get bought out by a company like Google by their self-marketing and as the offering didn't seem to be anything overly complex when they are leveraging the same cloud service components like everyone else .
The company felt overly marketed with the CEO marketing travel accessories and having no tech experience other than that she wanted to run a startup and that she went to Cambridge and was a leading debator.
Ultimately it felt rather cliquey and didn't feel like they had a strong engineering team but were over relying on culture fit and everyone was quite young.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basic questions about the technologies that they use
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Peek in Aug 2021
Interview
Initial 30-minute call with the hiring manager, followed by a 45-minute call with the Director of Engineering. Once the initial interest was confirmed, I was given a take-home test that was designed to simulate a common use-case at Peek. The challenge had to be submitted within 4 days, and they recommended that you take 4-6 hours to finish it, but no more than 8. After my submission, they scheduled another 2.5 hour remote "on-site" session where I met with more members of the team and discussed my submission as well as my technical background.
Overall, I enjoyed the entire process from start to finish. There was a consistent level of interest, effort, and focus that was displayed at every stage. There was no extraneous "shock-and-awe" session which companies love to start off with to over-inflate your expectations only to then saddle you with a long and arduous process replete with generic coding tests and disinterested interviewers. It was obvious that Peek took great care to select people that matched their core values and could perform well in their environment. The whole process was also fast, it took around 3 weeks from the initial call to the verbal offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can you describe a situation that you were in which led to an error being shipped into production and the steps you took to resolve it?