I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Adobe (San Jose, CA)
Interview
Very impressed with the people with whom I interviewed. The HR Business Partner team overall is pretty impressive. Hiring manager lacked polish, but seemed solid.
The recruiting process was a little dragged out. Had several over the phone interviews, then 1 day of in person interviews (with 4 people) then NEVER heard a peep. Not even after sending a follow up email with the recruiting manager.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most interviews were more conversational in manner, asking me to go over my background and experience. One person asked "what one word best describes you?" which I found really contrived and utterly useless (reminded me of Microsoft 15 years ago). Best practices in interviewing now-a-days are much more focused on experiences. I'd say the interviewers were pretty good about discussing my experience, but no out of the ordinary or difficult questions.
One of Adobe's recruiters initially contacted me through email. I was looking for a change, so I decided to set up a phone screen with them to start. I moved on to the in-person interview process, for which they wanted me to complete a design exercise beforehand, which I had to submit a week after receiving. (I definitely sent it in at the last minute.) At the in person interview, I first interviewed with many members of the XD (Experience Design) team, and the next interview was with some engineers and product managers. I came back a few weeks later to meet with one last person who was absent during the initial interviews.
The biggest kink in the process was that we wanted to move forward but faced a hiring freeze. After the hiring freeze, they re-contacted me, and I ended up coming back in to interview with a few different product managers. It was a longer process than I would have expected or really would have wanted, but I'm happy about the result.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you implement a feature for adding friends into your already-designed application?