I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Forward (San Francisco, CA) in Sept 2023
Interview
I Interviewed at Forward. 1st round was 30 mins call with Engineering team. As everyone said, they are way too obsessed with themselves. Why forward, where do you see yourself in 5 years, whats your preference in terms of company size etc. Got 2nd round which was a 1hr technical round with the engineering team. First 20 mins was just introduction and talked about the experience I had. The questions were not straight forward at all. Everything boiled down to why forward. Even after answering these kind of questions in the 1st round, the interviewer kept saying, I see notes from your previous round and you discussed about this. can you tell why? Oh my god. It was so frustrating, if you have notes then refer it. Why ask a candidate again again the same questions in every round. It looked like an investigation than an interview. The next 40 mins was leet coding. I completed the coding question in 20 mins with all test cases passed and optimized solution. Then interviewer gave me additional condition to add in the existing problem. I gave the solution for that too. Overall the leet code was easy. However, guess what? They rejected me. I guess they are not looking for people who could solve the problem or have good technical skills. They are just looking for someone who can prove in 1 hr that they are obsessed with the company. And I am not sure how one could do that.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
WHY Forward? Preferences in terms of company size? 2D array problem. Keyboard and word given, find the number of key movements needed to type the word.
Great! Focused system design + average leetcode questions. Behavioral interview was very nice and straightforward. Systems design interview include building a scribe tool for doctors to use. Was more a paired session with the interviewer.
It was pretty normal as far as interviews in tech go for entry level engineers. It felt like they were spending more time selling me on their product than on questioning me. Some standard Leetcode style question.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Something about the minimum travel distance on a keyboard grid.
Medium difficulty. Interviewed before the company abruptly shut down. Like the team, did not get many specifics about the business, particularly regarding the care pods. It was a few phone screens and then onsite.