We feel like system design interviews that ask you to “build uber” or “build twitter” are not only contrived, but they are also more of a power trip on the side of the interviewer. We don’t care for that. We want to see things that you’ve built in real-world situations, and this is your time to shine!
You’ll be asked to come prepared to this interview with a system design diagram of a complex / non-trivial system that you’ve built in the past. Since we’re full stack engineers here, it will be expected that you talk about both the backend and the frontend. Typically on the backend we see diagrams for distributed systems, but the diagram you present to us could be of something non-distributed that is of high complexity.
During the call we’ll dive deep on your rationale for various decisions and better understand your thinking process.
The main goal is for both parties (you & Caribou) to get a feeling for what it will be like to work here. Do you like us? Do you like the way we write code and / or think? Those are important questions that you’ll likely find the answer to in this call. At Caribou, pairing is a very common activity and as such it is something we require all of our engineers to be willing to do.
You’ll be joining an engineer as they walk you through a pre-existing codebase. In the hour-long call, you’ll be collaborating to add functionality to this codebase.
In this call you’ll meet with one or two of the leaders at Caribou, either Christine David, Christine Simone, or Cory Blumenfeld, who will focus more on behavioral and situational type questions. Familiarizing yourself with the STAR method of answering these types of questions will go a long way.
You’ll have time to ask questions near the end of the call. This is a great opportunity ask about current business metrics / outcomes and in general learn more about our own culture and long-term vision.
Congrats! We’d love to have you on our team and join a group that is committed to your career growth. We hope you stay for a while and say, “I grew and did my best work at Caribou” 🦌