A friend referred me, and HR contacted me the next day. They said the first round would be simple multithreading code plus DB internals.
The first technical round was hand-writing a read-write lock, with a follow-up on how to keep writers from starving. Basically you add a write-pending flag, and if a write is pending you don't let new readers in. I had worked on exactly this in a previous project, so I knew it well, and it took about 20 minutes. Then came DB internals. They asked about the steps a query goes through when it comes in, which felt a bit like rote textbook stuff. Then they had me go deep on the buffer cache, and then go deep on the optimizer. Honestly it felt like my DB final exam back in school. Oh, and an Eng 3 and a senior interviewed me together. I assumed the senior would lead and the Eng 3 would just sit in and learn, but the Eng 3 led. Anyway, the conversation felt enjoyable, and the discussion vibe was really good. That same night they told me I passed! My referring friend got the news right away too. The company feels very transparent overall, and my impression so far is very good.
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