Tractable interview experience
Summary
I interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer position at Tractable in Noida, India. The overall process took 1.5 months and involved three rounds, ultimately ending in a rejection despite positive verdicts on all rounds, with the recruiter stating restructuring led to the decision.
Full Experience
Interviewed for a Senior Software position at Tractable Noida, India.
Overall time taken: 1.5 months Difficulty: easy–medium process: disappointing
Round 1: General discussion on my tech stack (MERN). Minor discussion on designing an auth system in a distributed environment. This was conducted by a staff engineer (Indian) who didn’t seem very smart. He literally googled questions on my tech stack and was asking them to me. After getting through most of the questions, he became suspicious and asked me to remove my video background. He ultimately pinned me down with a TypeScript question. I made a mistake in this (in my opinion, no one prepares for TypeScript)) Verdict: +ve
Round 2: Very good discussion on a system design problem, which involved designing a system that can be integrated into a B2B system, with functionality to upload images and return/show analysis on a dashboard. Cool guy (non-Indian from the London office), had a decent discussion. Verdict: +ve
Round 3: They called me to visit the office; I attended this in-person round in Noida (Indian interviewer). He asked me about my current understanding of their product. We spent around 30–35 minutes discussing the company’s internal products. He then gave me a problem on the whiteboard: I’m dropped into a team where all members are building individual features, and later those will be combined. The problem was to design a driver tracking screen feature (end-to-end) for a food delivery app. I started, and he kept changing requirements like “you have to match drivers with orders,” “how will orders get assigned,” “what if drivers turn their phone off,” etc. He asked very vague questions and tried to ask product-related questions. In my opinion, he was trying to pin me down on something, but I handled the questions decently. Verdict: +ve
I followed up multiple times with the recruiter. After 10 days of the third round, he said that they currently don’t need one more person and are not hiring for this position. He mentioned that they had done some restructuring, which led to this decision.
Interview Questions (3)
Design an Auth System in a Distributed Environment
Design an authentication system suitable for a distributed environment.
Design a B2B System with Image Upload and Dashboard Analysis
Design a system that can be integrated into a B2B environment. This system should include functionality to upload images and then process these images to return/show analysis on a dashboard.
Design an End-to-End Driver Tracking Screen for a Food Delivery App
Design an end-to-end driver tracking screen feature for a food delivery application. The design should account for aspects like matching drivers with orders, assigning orders, and handling scenarios where drivers might turn their phone off. The problem was presented in a scenario where individual features would later be combined by a team.