Few months back I have tried to apply for few Yandex positions. Namely, Site Reliability Engineer and Go Developer. During first introduction (HR) stage, we agreed to concentrate on SRE role.

Below are the stages I went through for SRE role at Yandex:

• HR: Usual introductory meeting with a recruiter. Standard questions on previous experience, salary expectations, and general “checks” on adequacy.
• Code / Algorithms: A bit of computer science theory plus life coding in an online file editor (with syntax highlighting). Usual practice in big companies. You can’t run or even compile your code. And have to “convince” the interviewer that your solution is working correctly. Problem complexity level is LeetCode’s easy.
• Hands on: Given access to an SSH server, fix few issues/scenarios. Some of the scenarios are super easy, some require real hands-on experience. Example: identify and fix inode exhaustion on a file system. The crucial point, one has to find the issue, because you are usually told to run a command or perform an action (which wills).
• DevOps: Similar to “hands on” section, but every time you’re asked to run some custom binary. Then find why this binary fails, hangs or crashes.
• Cultural fit / Team intro: Combination of introductory meeting and technical questions. You’ll know more about actual day-to-day tasks and challenges. This section can happen a few times (assuming your resume is interesting to team managers).
• Offer: This section hasn’t happened to me, but it’s fair to assume that you’ll be presented with a contract and an offer.

The whole interview process took about 2 months. Wasn’t actually expecting it to be so tedious.

Thu May 2, 2024 / 269 words / Job Interview