New Grad Recruiting - Sentry.io
Sentry.io is a SF-based startup that focuses on error monitoring, performance monitoring and distributed tracing. Sentry.io is OSS.
I was fortunate to interview and receive an offer from them as a New Grad Software Engineer. Unfortunately, due to lack of sponsorship, it wasn’t a viable option.
Hackerrank screen
There’s a hackerrank screen. I don’t recall the questions since it was a while back but the hackerrank was quite straightforward.
Phone screen
The 30-minute phone screen was a chat with a recruiter. She asked me about my resume, my experience and what I was looking for at Sentry. I was interested in the OSS aspect of the work itself. Additionally, I interned at MongoDB so Sentry, being similar and slighly smaller in size, intrigues me. I was also doing research in distributed tracing space so I wanted to see the topic in action.
First Technical Interview
I was soon moved onto the first technical screen, which was 60 minutes. It was with a Staff Engineer. I really enjoyed the interview. They asked me to implement/design a package manager. Overall, it utilized a basic graph algorithms, which was fun to implement.
After the technical, I chatted with my intervier, who had an impressive background. In addition to Sentry, he maintains a few OSS projects on the side. Overall, he was very nice and approachable.
Final Technical Interviews
After a few days, I was moved onto the final round. Final round includes: 2 60-minute technical interviews and 1 chat with hiring manager.
The first technical interviewer had me design and implement a parking spot. This was a fun one because we went back and forth a lot. I would bring up an idea and my interviewer would counter with another specification. Hence, I would need to make changes to my design. Even though it was stressful at the time, I also got extremely excited.
The second technical interviewer was a bit more blunt and to the point. He had me design a rate limiter. To be honest, I went a bit cuckoo during this interview. I was unable to process hints and carry out basic math. I struggled a lot for 10 minutes trying to understand the problem statements. Eventually, I was able to finish the design optimally with the help of my interviewer.
The last interview was a chat with the hiring manager. He asks me about my work at MongoDB, the technical details of my projects and what I want to work on at Sentry. He was incredibly friendly but also detailed when a technical topic came up. He constantly probed for my technical understanding while remaining curious and courteous. If I worked at Sentry, I would love to have him as my manager.
Lesson
Here are the lessons I learned:
- Breathe. Don’t give up. During the 2nd technical, I was very nervous and almost had a meltdown due to nervousness. BUT just breathe. If you can’t come up with anything, just start speaking.
- Start with simple approach first. Optimization comes after.
- Review my time complexity analysis. 1
- Sometimes, failing 1 interview is not the worst. I thought I didn’t get the offer due to 2nd technical but I was surprised.
Conclusion
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my interviews with Sentry. Everyone I met throughout the process were impressive but approachable. Despite my hiccups along the way, they always nudged me into the right direction. I would love an opportunity to work there in the future, when immigration is more convenient.
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Honestly, I should really review this. So many time, I was in doubt about my answer. ↩