A day at Thought Works !!!

I did not know about this company before August 2010. I have heard this name before, but i thought it is yet another software company that exists in this IT world. I was wrong then. This company is really a pioneer in following Agile methodologies. It really has a strange procedure for conducting its interviews and for selecting its employees. I am here to narrate about what had happened to me in the past when i took up an interview with Thought works.

I applied for a Java based Engineer position at thought works and i did not get a call for a long time. I thought it is a place for the geeks and I forgot about this. One day i got a call from Thought works chennai asking me about my interest with Thought works and how i came to know about the opening and what do i know about thought works. I spoke to that guy for about 10 minutes and he assessed me and my interests towards TW. He said he will send an email with the assignment and asked me to resend it within three days with the source code for the problem and the unit testing code as well. I received an email from him asking me to solve one of the two common problems (they generally used to provide), the first one being Mars Rovers and the second one is the Sales Tax Problem.

I chose the Mars Rovers problem and solved it in my way. I had applied a couple of design patterns and sent the code to him.

I got the feedback after 2 weeks saying that I have been short listed in the first round and they asked me to come for the second round of interviews to their office venue near guindy.

My second round was a pair programming round and I had a senior guy ( i guess ) and one girl who sat with me to analyse the pros and cons in my coding style and my OOPS logic. We analysed the code for about half hour and found few modifications to be done based on refactoring concepts. A long discussion went on between me and the senior guy about exposing a couple of methods. The senior guy did not look compromised as i went ahead with my solution to solve the problem (This is the root cause for my rejection :-(). Once we were done with this, they gave me an extension to solve. As i had solved the Mars Rovers problem, the extension was given regarding the same. He told me that whenever a rover moves to the edge of the plateau, it dies and it marks that place with a beacon before that, so that no other rovers in future will move to that place. He asked me to implement that. I was able to complete that.

After this i had a panel interview and that went on for about an hour and those guys asked me every nook and corner in all the projects that i worked on and also the technologies involved in that. Then they gave me a small design and asked me to draw the class diagram for that issue. I was able to complete that with little suggestions provided by them.

After two days, I was conveyed a message that i did not make it to the final round of the interview. The discussion i had with the senior guy did not work out and that had led to my rejection.

So People, whoever is interested or applying for Thought works try to be well versed with the OOPS concepts and design patterns and refactoring patterns. Even if you know all this, please do not argue with any of the tech panel members. If you do this, i think anyone can make it to the "Geeks company" (That s how they call themselves).

All the best !!!!