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How I passed the interview in Yandex: my difficult but successful experience

For a little more than six months, I have been working in search of Yandex as a release engineer. And almost from the first working day I want to write about how I responded to the vacancy, how the interviews went, what I liked in this process, and what I did not really like. But first I entered the course of the matter, and then every day such interesting tasks appeared in my work that I was not even ready to take my mind off this story.

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And a year ago my life seemed to be similar, but at the same time a completely different situation - I didn’t have enough time for a hobby, there were many tasks, but they didn’t bring me any pleasure. In the end, I decided to change. In fact, this position in Yandex was not the first one I considered. For the time that has passed before my first working day, I have refreshed a lot of topics in my head. And before the final interview, I had to take a few more. Now I understand what mistakes I made in this process, so I want to share my experience with you. I would be glad if it would be useful to someone. I want to say that these are not official recipes from Yandex recruiters, but only my own conclusions. At the end of the post I will share the list of references that helped me in the preparation, and I will also add those sources that I consider useful when looking back.
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Every space trucker knows that there are no perfect space ships in the real world. Something always goes wrong: if a ship has powerful engines, it means you probably forgot to mount anti-meteor guns on the ship; if there is an abundance of cabins for the crew, then expect trouble with holds for luggage.

Moreover, experienced space wolves certainly noticed that the process of assembling a starship from pieces of sewer systems and other improvised means has a certain similarity to the preparation for interviews and other important events in human life. Did I think about this when I first planted in the Yandex office last fall?

You look so tired and unhappy

Of course, did not think. At that time, mkot worked in Yandex , and at that time I accidentally parked my own spaceship in one small company that was developing microcontroller data acquisition systems. At the interview I just showed what I do in my free time, and they took me. Every day, like any regular intergalactic cruiser pilot developer, I worked from morning till night and sometimes in my sleep. The leadership demanded the impossible, dreamed of production feats, and I tried my best.

Understanding the harm of daily feats for health did not come immediately. At first I discovered that I did not have enough time for a hobby, then a cycle of meaningless business trips began, and there was no time left even for life. After months, I (finally!) Realized that the goals of the leadership (to earn more money) do not coincide with my own (to make people happier). The feeling of emptiness of own life can not be compensated by any salary. I was determined to start a tractor spaceship, even bought my bags, only I didn’t know where to go. And then my phone rang.

I'm gonna put on an iron shirt

The call of IT-recruiter knocked me out of a rut. I was so absorbed in thoughts of dismissal from my current job that I didn’t even think about finding a new one. The recruiter was looking for someone for Kaspersky Lab, and I decided that it would be interesting to try my hand. IT recruiter strongly insisted on the need to submit a resume, which I, of course, did not have, over the next two hours. I listened to him, and made the most significant and at the same time the happiest mistake in this story: I made a poor-quality resume in a hurry. I never got a call from LK.

It was hard not to draw two simple conclusions. First: I can work where I want if I try. Second: you need a good resume. For a few weeks I was lost in thought. Finally, in my head clicked: "I really, really want to work in Yandex." And I began to make a serious resume. Spent on it, it seems, the whole day. I chose the most interesting vacancy, sent a request, and the very next day I received an invitation for a Skype interview.

And here for the first time I turned into a space trucker. I had three weeks to prepare for the interview, and a huge number of topics that needed to be updated in memory: * nix, shell scripting, Python, awk, version control systems, TCP / IP, testing, algorithms and data structures ( almost complete list at the end of this article). I did not know what was more important of this, and therefore I tried to “grab as many different blocks as possible”. Perhaps this is not the best idea, but I did not have any others.



The interview took about an hour. Passed without brilliance, but seemingly worthy. They asked a lot about bash and algorithms, but I think they could ask about anything — and I was, it seemed to me, damn well prepared for questions, although I was worried.

The next day (May 14), I received a letter:
We invite you to an interview on Friday, May 23 at 12-00. The meeting point is the Yandex office on Lev Tolstoy Street.


You will need

It took less than two weeks to prepare for the face-to-face interview, and I again began to assemble my “spaceship” from knowledge. This time I decided to focus on Advanced BASH scripting, Cormen's Algorithms, and Lutz's Python. I’ve already read some guidance on administering Linux systems on the plane.

Here is what I wrote on my blog the next day:
Getting up at 4 am, taxi to the airport, taking off, landing, aeroexpress, subway - everything is standard and everything is on schedule. I hoped to sit from 10 to 12 in some cafe, and very much counted on Sabbey, marked on Yandex maps. Unfortunately, Subway was not there, and I had to go to McDonald’s. Having filled the stomach with a ton of junk-food, I went to the Yandex office on foot — and it was there an hour earlier than the appointed time. Very awkward happened, in general. I had to wait a bit, Olga met me from the personnel department (or what was the correct name for it?), And the face-to-face interview began.

First, a conversation on general topics: how did you get, did you not get hungry, what did you do at work. Then other interviewers joined the conversation. First we talked about “homework” - it’s embarrassing and funny that I couldn’t solve a simple task at a Skype interview. Although it took just a minute to find the right solution, this minute was already after the Skype interview. Then - a couple of tasks for quick wits (and terver).

Then I was offered a couple of tasks close to reality. Tasks, it seems to me, were primarily topics for conversation. I am afraid that I did not answer very well - but it seems that my answers were more or less satisfied with all. Finally, I was given the opportunity to implement a solution to the problem. Self-confidently said that "40 minutes is enough for me." I didn’t notice the time, but it seems I’ve been digging twice as long. At the end, she made some annoying errors in the code - one unrecognized lockfile, and two due to inattention. In my defense, I can only say that by that moment I was on my feet for 12 hours, and I was very tired. Although, such errors can be skipped without a flight, just carelessly re-reading the written code.

I wrote the code in absolute solitude; when I added - the interviewers came again (by the way, very nice people), looked at the code, and said that they would not torture me anymore. The whole interview took about five hours. Finally, they promised me that they would contact me and said goodbye.

Now I have a few comments on this story.

I made the first serious mistake a week before the interview, when I bought tickets. Boys and girls, you should not make two hyper- hop flights in one day. A taxi ride to the airport at four in the morning and a two-hour flight are unlikely to have a positive effect on your well-being. It is very important to sleep and rest before the interview.

The second and third errors are related to time. Quite by chance, I arrived at the office an hour before the scheduled time, as reported to HR, and the interview began as early as 11:20. It would be much more useful to relax, relax and consider the horses in front of the office, not to mention that I was ashamed because of the violation of agreements and other people's plans. When I figured out how much time I would need to solve the problem, it would seem better to multiply the estimate of labor costs by two (or even three).

The fourth mistake was that I did not watch my state of health, and worked on the refusal. If I turned off the air conditioner (to be honest, I almost died of cold in five hours under the breeze), and from time to time I took tea breaks, I would definitely feel better.

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think

In the life of any space trucker, once a moment comes when his plate is in outer space with a single engine running. I felt the same way when I waited endlessly for a response from Yandex. Summer work. Summer work.

A month after the interview, I noticed on my blog:
I would not like to say “But if you try sometime you may find / You get what you need”, today is not the case. From Yandex hinted that the prospects are not very bright.

Yes. I tried, and received a polite refusal, something like "We would like to take you, but we can not." Perhaps this was due to the closure of the video hosting service - I had just interviewed a vacancy in Video. Perhaps this was due to how I showed myself at the interview. “Well, no, that won't do! Suitcases purchased target selected. I'll try again! ”- I decided, and sent a request with a resume to the next vacancy.

Do you know what “complexity: hardcore” is in testing “assembling a spacecraft from improvised means”? Skype interview was scheduled after two days, and I just needed to refresh the memory of C ++, algorithms and data structures, bash and testing methods.

Hold your breath and count to ten

Two weeks after the second Skype interview I was offered a dream job. Like this:
Nina, good afternoon!
Let us fix our preliminary agreements by letter. YANDEX LLC offers you the position of Release Engineer in the Search Stability Group.

Of course, the adventure is not over. I had to go through a cheerful bureaucratic process of dismissal, donate to friends and relatives almost all the property accumulated over many years, walk many kilometers with suitcases in Moscow, and search for an apartment for a long time. In general, it would be enough for another article.

All they've got's imagination

Someone (it seems, Kostya Gorsky) said something like the following: “For the first six months in Yandex, it seemed to me that I was on a spacecraft.”

But looking around, I understand that for me Yandex in the first place is a lot of talented and interesting people. And that's what I suddenly thought: maybe the matter is not at all in the modules of the spacecraft, but in its pilot?

Instead of postscript


Here are the materials I used when preparing for interviews:


Here are the materials I would use to prepare for the interviews if I knew about them:

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/251715/

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