Dropbox full stack interview is not LeetCode style, so it focuses on the design/debug/real work related coding, which is similar to Stripe. But the interview question setup is easier than the Stripe. Stripe problems are too long and requires much time to read. Also it depends on much context, such as the debug problem about preact.
Process
Dropbox provides the interview preparation which includes the coding required skills, like basic DOM API for web dev. It’s important to prepare based on the interview preparation email.
Each round is 1 hour and have 5 minutes to ask question. All the interviewers are very nice. Design interview will provide some guidence and Debug session also provides some hint when you’re in the wrong direction. The communication is bi-direction. So the overall feeling is great, which even better than most big companies in Bay Area.
After 5 rounds, there is a wrap-up session, 30 mins to ask any questions to a manager. It’s called session where the candidate interview Dropbox.
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Design. Because it’s full stack, the design includes web frontend and backend, but more focus on the frontend. Provided a UX mockup, the candidate should collect all requirements, then define the API and data model.
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Debug. A nodejs web project which has 7 bugs. It’s not requried to fix all. I just fix first 5 and explain how to fix the 6th bug.
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Manager session. Discuss your project experiences, what’s the result/impact of the project, what’s your contribution, what’s problem do you resolve, how to improve it.
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Deep Dive. Pick one of your project to show the tech design.
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UI coding. Develop a simple feature based Promise and some basic UI.
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Wrap-up. Ask question to hiring manager.
Conclusion
Pros
- It’s very like real work experience, not focusing on the unuseful coding algorithms, such as DP, and some tricky coding skills.
- Coding is easy, a lot of explantion to demostrate your project experience, including the tech design, the cross team effort, the organization contribution, etc.
Cons
- The only thing I can say it’s too long, 5 hours for 5 session, and an extra 30mins wrap up session. It’s tired.