I decided to interview with Schwab after a good friend of mine moved to Austin and I considered the possibility of living in the same area. I also wanted to experience a new corporate environment. I had 1 initial phone screening, 3 technical interviews, and 1 managerial interview. I progressed through each round with lots of confidence. I was able to answer every question with accuracy and depth in addition to asking some questions of my own in return. My interviews went really well. In fact, some lasted less than the allotted time because I gave the right answers to the satisfaction of the interviewers. While the general interview process was positive, unfortunately the result I got was exceptionally disappointing. It took the recruiter 1 week to get back to me with a final answer, and that really happened after I asked for an update. I was told that the feedback she got from different teams was positive, but they will make me an offer within the next 6 months if they could find a team for me. She said that the offer would be made without me having to go through another interview process. From my experience, this was very frustrating to hear. Either it was a politically correct way of rejecting a candidate or the rec wasn’t even open to begin with and I was put in a pool of potential future hires. There is also the possibility that another person (who either did better or was willing to accept a smaller compensation package) was given the job. If I don’t hear back from them within the next 2 weeks, I will treat this as a no go and move on to talk to other companies. I would say that the interview process at Schwab needs a lot of work as they need to be more forthcoming with their plans instead of dilly dallying around maybes. If you have time constraints and you need a job asap, don’t consider Schwab.

Had a virtual interview with a manager. Normal enough. At the end he tells me that he is going to schedule an in person interview. He tells me this interview will cover technical troubleshooting, along with some design and architecture with a white board. I get to the site, someone picks me up in the lobby and takes me to a conference room. He then starts a Teams meeting where the other interviewers then join the Teams meeting. So they had me come in person to one of their sites so that all of the people interviewing me could do so virtually. Throughout the entire interview only one of the interviewers turned on their camera, which was for the (roughly) 5 minutes he asked me questions. Other than that the people from Charles Schwab were faceless blocks on a Teams meeting. Of the hour and a half interview there was maybe 10 minutes of conversation around troubleshooting or design. The rest of the interview was 95% random java questions, most of which seemed like they were things the interviewers had done or used sometime within the last 24 hours or questions that were taken from an Oracle Java certification exam. The person who asked the most questions could barely be understood. Even the other Charles Schwab person that came to get me from reception couldn't understand what he was asking. Cheap microphone + Teams = having to ask someone to repeat themselves at least three times, which makes you look like a jerk. We did actually need the whiteboard, they wanted to me write some code on it for an entry level software position, because who doesn't write their best code on a whiteboard. The behavior of the people from Charles Schwab seemed unprofessional and felt unprepared. To have someone come for an in person interview only to have the interview be on Teams was rude.