I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Simplaex (Berlin) in Oct 2021
Interview
-First interview with the team with a few technical questions at the end
-At home task, with 3 questions, including how would you set up a campaign.
-Final interview with CEO
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What attribution model would you use for our core business (gaming on Google ads, search focused)?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Simplaex (Berlin)
Interview
I applied through a recruiter. Initially, I had a phone screening with the PM of the data science team. It went fine. Then they sent a case study. The case study was asking for a solution to heir own business case. Needless to say that the problem was complex and challenging. I was thinking that if I had the time to solve that problem well, then I can found my own startup instead of submitting the solution to them for free.. I told them, it is not realistic to solve the case study in a few hours and then they said "yeah, yeah we know, just present your initial ideas and do only a part, we don't expect a full solution and this is only to serve as a initial step in the technical interview round.." I said ok and told them I could spare a few hours. I did that and submitted my solution. They acknowledged the receipt of the solution two days after I submitted and within the following three days they responded. It turned out that they carelessly reviewed my solution concluding that I applied a probabilistic model in a wrong way hence they don't want to proceed. However, this is entirely wrong. They didn't even understand the programming trick I did to avoid underflow. They thought that it is an indicator that I assumed normal distribution when it is not a good choice. Obviously these people don't know what they are talking about or they are just being asked to find excuses to decline candidates until someone provides a full solution to their own business problem for free. I would say, simply avoid this company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Details about the past ML projects you did in your current job, difficulties you faced, etc
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 6 days. I interviewed at Simplaex
Interview
Only one interview with their CTO via Skype.
tl;dr: interviewer was in a rush to finish the interview; zero interest on presenting the company; focused on asking questions that you can give memorized answers; rude behavior.
First part of the interview: as soon he knew I could hear him (10s after the call started) he spoke non-stop at 1.5x speed for 5 minutes about the company’s main products, what they do and their business model, using terms that belong to their business. If you have never worked with Ads/campaigns/etc, look for it first or you will end up like me: hoping he doesn’t ask anything about what just dumped on you.
Second part of the interview: time to introduce yourself.
Third part of the interview: reading a script, he gave me basic questions about Java keywords, multithreading concepts and data structures. Get back to your books from CS101 and I’m sure you will have a better interview than mine.
Due to his professional manners during the interview, I would never work for his company under his management. Good luck for you.