I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Hungryroot in Sept 2025
Interview
- Interview consisted of three steps: technical, behavioral (with technical topics), and a technical/behavioral back-to-back interview.
- Lots of other comments about recruiter T. I do not agree with them, but can see why they were perceived as "uninterested" or "catty." I think T has to go through a ton of content, screening, and candidates, but I did not feel a lack of professionalism. Just be ready to talk about your capability to do the work as a backend developer (for me this was a backend interview).
- It's a straightforward process, pretty efficient, and everyone was friendly and professional.
- The only thing I really take issue with is the difference in difficulty between the first and second technical. The difficulty of the second interview was orders of magnitude more difficult than the first. Out of several dozen technicals I've had in the 12 years I've been doing them, I think this was my worst performance. You will need to do at least several hours of review / prep if you are a middle-of-the-road developer or perform poorly under strong pressure, even if you work with Django every day. I did not have the luxury of prep material and can't guarantee that the interview format doesn't change, but hopefully you can learn from my failures (see question section below). I mark this interview as difficult, HOWEVER, this is not going to be the case if you are a gifted developer or work a ton with non-trivial queries in Django every day. I don't know why I felt that this was more difficult than my two FAANG/MANGA interviews several years ago, but I attribute it to the fact I had no way to prep for this and I did for those.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. 3 parts - Passive knowledge of Django, Passive knowledge of Django with performance considerations, Leetcode Easy.
2. Behavioral - Goes into detail about your work experience. Be prepared to talk about some projects and how you treat tradeoffs in your work.
3. Technical - Pay attention closely here. Recruiter will "prep" you and say Django/Python knowledge, but this is pretty unhelpful IMHO since you think "I have no specific info and I use this every day, it can't be that bad." This is more a test of Django ORM + general Python. Know ManyToManyField + "through" field well. I thought I knew this and even worked with it recently, but I stumbled more than I should which is kind of embarrassing. Get the syntax down for referencing the ManyToManyRelatedManager attribute. Drill your SQL knowledge from a Django ORM standpoint. Know it like the back of your hand. Know aggregation, annotation, throw in some subquery practice just in case. I failed on the first step after I blanked and implemented a broken monstrosity of a naive solution that looked straight out of the first assignment of a CS 101 course. My general sense from years of technical interviews is that you are expected to pass 80-100%. This is the first interview I've done where I think it is probably less than that (just a hunch). The interview is 5 parts which is too much in my opinion. However, the interviewers were relatively helpful, and I respect them for that.
4. Behavioral: No detailed technical questions here. This felt more like a general behavioral and a team fit interview with a manager on another team.
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Hungryroot (New York, NY)
Interview
Talked with a catty sounding guy on the phone who didn't really seem very interested in me or my background. No technical questions. Initial salary offering was less than what I was making. Got a rejection letter not too much later. I wouldn't bother with these guys.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Hungryroot in Jun 2024
Interview
Their interview process is somewhat standard besides having additional technical interviews in later stages.
Starts off with a phone screen and then into a technical interview.
The technical interview is conducted virtually using a coderpad type thing and they ask 3 questions.
2 questions are Leet code questions and have nothing to do with your day to day responsibilities as listed on the job opening.
The other one is SQL which was pretty straight forward SQL, some select statements, where clauses and a simple JOIN.
The interviewer said normally they move people onto the next round if they complete 2/3.
However, they then have virtual onsites where you'll go through another coding exercise AND additional architectural exercises with the CTO....(Now I can see the driving force behind this madness).
You're looking at 7-8 interviews before you get to the offer stage, don't slip....
The interviewer was respectful and nice and represented the company well(I would too in times like these).
If you're good at leet code style problems, you'll probably do just fine during the interview process.
If not, I would just look the other way.
A lot of companies are switching to take home projects that you host on Github and align with day to day responsibilities of the role.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
Q: Create a function that returns the pivot index where the numbers on the left side equal the numbers on the right side.