J'ai passé un entretien chez Instacart (New York, NY)
Entretien
The recruiter was fast and friendly. Answered all my questions. I was reluctant to answer take-home questions because they’re unfair to the candidate, but did because I liked the company. The first question wasn’t bad; took only five minutes. The second question requires building an entire full-stack web app, production ready, meaning it must have tests. The question says it’ll take about 4.5 hours, but that just forces people to spend way more than 4.5 hours if they want to make it look good. I spent 10 hours on mine. I was promptly rejected, without any explanation why my solution wasn’t acceptable. If I spent an entire day on their question, I expected at least some feedback on why my answer wasn’t up to par. I’ll never answer a take-home question again.
I'm sure it's easier to grade applicants with AI, but it'd be nice to have humans involved in the interview process, too. You'll face a couple of AI powered coding challenges. The bigger problems are the ethical implications here after looking into how the company works, with variable pricing based on data on how badly they can screw the consumer with upcharges and how to keep money in their pockets rather than the shoppers & drivers
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
If you could replace your family with AI, would you do it?
J'ai postulé en ligne. J'ai passé un entretien chez Instacart (San Francisco, CA) en févr. 2026
Entretien
First there is a codesignal test. This is for 90 minutes and felt frantic. Way too many features/code paths to implement.
Then there is the karat llm interview which is 50 minutes.
Then a full day of regular interview loop.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
For CodeSignal it was implementing a cache key store with timestamps. Started with basic setting and getting, then evolved into more advanced code. 4 different parts. Writing a lot of code for this.
For the LLM interview you work with a company called Karat. You are giving an VS code like workspace and an ai to help. You have 50 minutes. They then dump a large project in your space. For me it was a bus route simulator.
I was then asked to implement a feature : Have the system prioritize Priority Pass people. I used the LLM to track down the code and implement it, but it was difficult to test in code that is unknown to me. The next feature was implementing wheelchairs for the bus which requires special capacity checks.
J'ai postulé en ligne. Le processus a pris 4 semaines. J'ai passé un entretien chez Instacart (Toronto, ON) en févr. 2025
Entretien
1. Online OA with codesignal to start with. Very standard and not hard
2. Got the 4 interview rounds and you can always divide into 2 parts of 2 interviews each. It was be 2 codesignals with medium difficulty and I managed to do both. One system design which was average for me and interviewer was okay as well. Behavioural round was standard. No wonder why I didn't manage to get the offer.