The interview process for a software engineer at Ebay takes 2-6 weeks on average.
Step 1: Phone screen with recruiter
Step 2: Technical phone interview
The phone interview comprises of a few theoretical questions about past projects and one coding exercise.
Step 3: Onsite interview
The onsite interview is a full-day affair. It consists of 4-5 45 min back-to-back sessions, along with a lunch interview. It includes whiteboard architecture exercise, a pair programming exercise, a presentation on a topic of the candidate's choice followed by a technical interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Round 1 : (Hackerearth based test) [Time : 1h15m]
This round had 2 questions.
Given an array of size N and K queries, find the number of segments containing the index(from queires) which is leftmost or rightmost and the number at index is >= each elements of that segment Eg : arr[] = [1,2,3] K = [3] -> o/p : 3 ([3],[2,3][1,2,3])
Modification of this question(https://leetcode.com/problems/find-k-closest-elements/).
Verdict: cleared
Round 2 : F2F [Time : 1h]
Given an array and a target sum k, find all a[i] + a[j] = k. Follow up: handle if the array has both duplicate and non-duplicate elements
Find the first non-repeating character in the string (with only lowercase letters) https://leetcode.com/problems/first-unique-character-in-a-string/. Follow up : i ) contains both lowercase & uppercase ii) case-insensitive & case sensitive iii) in O(1) space complexity
Verdict: cleared
Round 3 : F2F [Time : 1h]
Find if a linked list is a palindrome [expected time & space complexity : O(n) & O(1)]. https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-linked-list/
Find the diameter of the binary tree(https://leetcode.com/problems/diameter-of-binary-tree/)
Validate if a tree is BST(https://leetcode.com/problems/validate-binary-search-tree/)
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at eBay (Amsterdam) in Mar 2021
Interview
First, I had a call with the recruiter about the position. After that, they sent me an NDA about the process.
The first interview was a tech screening interview with the manager and a developer from the team of the open position. They asked me some questions about my past experiences. There was one thing that bothered me. When I mentioned some tools and technologies, I used them as regular users and stated that I don't know the full details and internals. They continued asking deep knowledge questions about these topics.
After the tech screen, they sent me a simple THA, which they expect to finish in 5 days. I finished it and sent them.
Several days later, the recruiter reached me for the following interview. It is a system design interview. Two different developers from two other teams attended. The discussion topic was significantly related to the working area of the position. In the end, they also asked two easy LeetCode questions.
Several days later, the recruiter reached me for the final step, a culture fit interview. There was a product manager and a team lead from the team of the open position. It was an ordinary culture fit interview. After some point, I understood that they didn't like my answers. At the final moments of the interview, the team lead suddenly shared screen and started talking about my THA. The summary of the talk was how poorly I wrote my code, and I am not a good software developer. I was surprised because why did you do two more interviews if my THA was terrible.
Two days later, I received a rejection mail. I asked for some feedback. Of course, there is no answer.
I interviewed six different people; only two of them were reasonable and friendly people.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at eBay (San Francisco, CA) in May 2021
Interview
Waste of time!
After three rounds of interview, that took 7 hours in total (2 tech screening calls and 5 hours of virtual onsite) they simply sent me a generic no-hire email.
No feedback, zero details.
Also, this was a Scala position and during that 7 hours no one has asked any Scala (or FP) related question at all!
The interview was irrelevant, they were more focused if I remembered LeetCode algorithms than if I knew how to do my work.
During the first screening call, they forbid me to use python's implementation of binary search and wanted me to write that from scratch.
That might be sufficient for new grads, but not for more senior candidates.