I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Snap (Los Angeles, CA) in Feb 2022
Interview
Consisted of a recruiter screen, one 1:1 technical interview with a lead engineer, and an "on-site" (remote) vidcon panel with five 1:1 sessions with a hiring manager and four cross-functional team members (ME, EE, ID).
The overall process took 12.5 weeks, from application to final interview round. This involved 7 weeks between the initial recruiter screening and the first interview, which only happened after pinging the recruiter to remind them to schedule it.
It took 3 more weeks to get the panel on-site together. The discussions flowed well and questions covered many technical and behavioral topics, including very specific design issues related to challenges encountered in their Spectacles glasses, which seemed bordering on "doing work for free" (illegal). The questions should be changedto be more generalized.
Most of the interviewers are early to early-mid career, and have worked at Snap for a large portion of their careers so far, so don't have a wide amount of experience in product development, or in interviewing skills. They might want to pre-plan and coordinate their interview agendas for topics, style, and coverage of a candidate's prior projects and skills, which is what I've experienced with other tech companies.
The overall hardware development team is relatively small, and the problems facing them are extremely difficult and time-consuming. Combined with big competition in the AR space, it's unclear if they'll be able to compete and launch viable products without growing.
Feedback from the recruiting team was within two days. They had other candidates who were a better fit for the role.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you do dimensional tolerance analysis?
Draw a stress-strain curve and describe it.
How do you improve stiffness in these glasses?
How do you do root cause analysis, such as in this broken hinge on the glasses?
How do you diagnose the cohesion/adhesion of this joint on the glasses?
What are Cp and Cpk?
How do you do root cause analysis and corrective action for this plastic part that breaks?
What kind of materials and coatings would be used for this battery contact on the glasses?
What manufacturing processes do you know the best/least?
How do you test products?
How would you design the PCB to fit through this small hinge on the glasses?
How do you ensure the position of these two cameras on the glasses?
How do you select connectors and cables to go board-to-board?
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Snap (Santa Monica, CA) in Feb 2022
Interview
It was a 5 hour interview and it was a little intimidating but they are helpful and are nice through the whole process. It was 1 project that was built upon for each new interviewer.
Not the best. First the recruiter no showed me for a 7 am interview on a Monday then from there the process was clunky. Not a lot of consistency and ultimately the “project” isn’t the best way to judge a candidates ability. When you’re faced with making a deck from scratch knowing nothing about internal guidance, themes, or style it’s a lot of time wasted on guessing. Ultimately they didn’t get back to me once I submitted my deck until I followed up over a week later. They could stand to do some work in recruiting and the candidate experience. Whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. If your candidates are investing hours of their time building a deck and interviewing, the least you could do would be to let them know if you’re not moving forward.