J'ai postulé via un recruteur. J'ai passé un entretien chez Substack (New York, NY) en oct. 2024
Entretien
First coding interview:
Calculate the document frequency and inverse document frequency for a body of strings. Optimization is to precompute the frequency for all words in the corpus. For the multi transform, store previously computed transforms in another map.
Frontend coding interview:
Update an existing React app to generate a graph using some randomly generated values using the react-chartjs-2 library. Components used the class-based components so review component lifecycle methods, i.e. not hooks.
Backend coding interview:
Use SQL to calculate predicted income for a publisher going from a free to paid model. Use that to generate a graph that you built in the frontend interview. Not really a backend interview as much as it is a SQL interview. This is an open-ended interview with no right answer. Generic coding interview:
Build a data structure that returns a range of values. For example, calling set(3, 6, ‘a’) will set indices 3, 4, and 5 to the value ‘a’. Runtime should not be linear with the number of indices being set. Calling get(0, 7) would then return [null, null, null, ‘a’, ‘a’, ‘a’, null].
System design interview:
Design a scalable system that sends out emails to newsletter subscribers. Newsletters can configure when emails are sent to its subscribers with a specific date/time.
J'ai passé un entretien chez Substack (San Francisco, CA)
Entretien
6 rounds in total, very basic questions about my experience with the opportunity to delve into my differentiation. Each hiring manager was extremely friendly but also looked very busy whiel interviewing me.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
How will your previous experience provide you for an industry shift like this?
J'ai postulé en ligne. J'ai passé un entretien chez Substack (Rometta, Tuscany) en mars 2026
Entretien
Recruiter was super nice and professional. But hiring manager didn’t make a strong impression and didn’t seem to have a clear understanding of the role. She avoided basic questions related to growth and international markets, answered my questions curtly, making it feel I was begging, simply because I applied. She was definitely not experienced for the role.