I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Bloomberg (New York, NY) in Sep 2012
Interview
The process was time-consuming and long. Two phone interviews full of technical questions (specific programming assignments to do and read over the phone, plus puzzles and general questions). Two on-line language exams (not too difficult but time consuming). Two multi-person on-site interview sessions, one with more programming tests and puzzles, another with more general experience and industry questions.
Followed up by a third-party background check.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
No single unusual question, but many requests to write or outline a program to solve a problem; as well as math/logic puzzles.
Terrible communication. Got passed between 3 different recruiters all of whom gave specific dates for updates and blew past them. Descriptions of what would be covered in the interviews are wholly inaccurate (don’t bother reading the PDF they sent to “prep” you, almost none of it came up in any of the 3 interviews I did with them.)
Interviewers themselves were decent but clearly had exact “right” answers they were looking for. What’s the point of a leetcode question where there’s only one way to implement it? What’s the point of a system design interview where you’re having a candidate parse through a complex system that they clearly already know everything about and are just looking for 1-2 EXACT modifications to check off their boxes? Was there even a right answer? I genuinely don’t know what this company was looking for. Waste of time, waste of effort, waste of resources. Avoid, avoid, avoid
Interviewed with two separate teams. Coding rounds. Leet code style question. The interview went on for 1 hr. Waiting for the next steps. The seem to like link lists and arrays