I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Bending Spoons in Oct 2021
Interview
I ended up applying to this position because I saw here on Glassdoor that they have an interesting recruitment process with lots of brain teasers.
I applied through their website, I've written a short motivational letter and in a couple of days I got a message accompanied with a link where I could find the famous problems.
There were 7 of them, divided in 4-6 questions (most of them with multiple choices, some with single choice), maximum allowed time per problem - 30 minutes.
So there goes somewhere around 3 hours of my life completing the problems, scratching my head and coming up with solutions.
For some of the problems you need some basic math skills, for others some basic logic skills and for other you just have to pay attention.
I wouldn't rate them as difficult, but neither I can say that I know if my answers were correct or not.
Some of them I found them quite repetitive and they stressed the same "qualities" of the person that was interviewed, but there's that...
After a couple of days I receive a congratulations message accompanied with two more problems this time (yeey).
Both of them had to do with me implementing an algorithm that would process some numbers/series of numbers. The response had to be submitted in no more than one hour and a half in any programming language or pseudocode along with a short description of what, how and why it does what it does.
The first one I would say I did it perfectly - I think there is no better solution (time/space complexity) and it was well documented as well.
The second one, on the other hand, I did f*** it up - I provided a partial solution with some bits missing and an explanation that was supposed to fill in for the parts missing.
Add this 3 hours to the 3 hours before - in total I spent about 6hours for this "first" step of the interview/screening process.
Almost a week later I get an email that I was rejected and they will make a 10euro donation in my name for thanking me that I invested this much amount of time in this process.
Good luck :)
Tests requires a few hours, selection process is slow.
Questions are around different domains, not always technical stuff.
Live test is not simple, and hard to reach it seems.
Neutral experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Analyze application downloads and usage statistics
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Bending Spoons
Interview
I did my application process during Fall 2023. First I submitted my CV, cover letter, and my academic transcript. I was given 11 tasks (tests) in three batches. These were mostly logical problems, coding problems, or questions about myself. After those, I had three interviews: behavioral, problem-solving, and technical. None of these need preparation beforehand. The interviews test problem-solving skills and critical thinking capabilities rather than testing for specific theoretical knowledge. For me, first two interviews were pretty chill; the technical one was more stressful, as I had no prior experience in backend.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Mostly logical problem-solving and technical questions in software engineering.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Bending Spoons (Milano)
Interview
I got contacted on LinkedIn and I sent my CV and a cover letter. After a few days, I was sent a batch of take-home tests, and if you do good on those you are given the next batch of tests and an initial interview. There were a couple more interviews after the initial one and the recruiter was happy to accommodate the times because of my specific circumstances. The recruiter was also friendly and responsive to any questions I had so it was an overall good experience and took a bit more than a month.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some questions that assess general problem-solving capabilities, so no preparation is needed.