How to get an offer in Badoo on the day of the interview. Part Two, for PHP developer

Hi, Habr! My name is Pavel Murzakov, I am a PHP tmilid in Badoo, and today I will tell you about a new opportunity to get a job offer in London in one day. As you may know, recently in Moscow, a recruitment event for Badoo to search for mobile developers took place. It turned out to be very successful - we offered eight guys a job in London and we hope to see them soon as part of our mobile team.

And in order to keep up with our iOS and Android teams (after all, there are now eight more people!), We decided to respond with dignity and hold a similar event, where we expect to find server-side-colleagues with our new mobile developers!

So, I suggest PHP developers to spend an hour and a half of their time and pass the test, according to the results of which we will select several dozens of people and invite them to our Moscow office for a personal interview (the rules do not change: communication only with the team, techies, no recruiters). And according to the results of the interview (on the same day), we may suggest that you work with us in London. Any organizational questions you can ask in the comments. And in personal messages, of course, to me or Bozhena yeah_boss .

The test you will find here .

UPD: Event is complete. As a result, we invited 28 people for an interview at the office, 5 of them received offers.

About the team and tasks

A typical task of the Server Team developer is the implementation of new functionality. To bring up to date - briefly sign for the process.

New features come up with guys from the Product Team and are described in the document, which we call PRD (Product Requirements Document). It contains what the user should see, use-cases, designs, and so on. The rest of this description is the team we call MAPI. The guys translate the grocery, human description from PRD to protocol terms: for example, which message should be changed, which fields should be added. In addition to the changes to the proto-file, the technical documentation for the feature is written: from where and what information the client and server take, how and what the other reacts to.

As a result, a new task comes to the Server Team developer as an aggregate:

• human feature description (PRD);
• diff for the proto file;
• technical description of protocol changes (MAPI).

The head of our department Nikolay Krapivny told us more about this process and the role of the Server Team at CodeFest .

In order not to turn people into a tool for the delivery of features, we allocate time for technical work. Here we are primarily waiting for the initiative from the developers themselves. Usually these are tasks from the following categories:

• productivity increase;
• improvement tools;
• increased stability / resiliency.

Our stack - well-known PHP, MySQL and Memcached. In everyday work, the developer somehow have to use them. We try to approach the choice of technology pragmatically, so if something can be done better using other tools, we are not afraid to use them. So we have, for example, Tarantool, Sphinx, Cassandra, Darner. Once there was even a MongoDB, but it didn't take root.

When these tools are not enough and there is nothing ready, we write something of our own. So, for example, I recently rewrote one of the parts on Go (my presentation on this topic is here ).

There are 30 people in our team, and it is distributed between two offices: Moscow and London. All these 30 people are divided into 4 more teams. Separation - by functionality. And we are all engaged in the development and support of the server side of Badoo’s mobile and web applications.

About the test

A few words about the test that we offer to pass in order to get an interview at our office. In total, there are 6 tasks in the test: two of them involve writing PHP-code, one more - SQL-query, and the remaining three - reasoning how to act in one or another practical situation.

We use the hackerrank.com platform. Before starting the test, you need to fill out a registration form, where, besides specifying a name and e-mail, you will need to give a link to your resume and enter a contact phone number to contact you in case of passing the test. If this is your first time at hackerrank.com, we recommend that you pass the sample test before proceeding to the main part (you will find a link to it above the test registration form).

Important! 90 minutes will be given for passing the test. Think in advance about how to allocate time for this, because test for a pause can not be put.

About moving

In short, the company helps employees with relocation at all stages and provides a full relocation package. What is important, by the word “helps” I do not mean consulting services, but real support, starting with obtaining visas for the employees themselves and their families and ending with the arrangement in London.

Doubt your English level? No problems! The company will help him pull up. In addition, employees are provided with temporary housing for the period of permanent search. In a word, everything possible is being done to make the process as comfortable as possible. More information about the move can be found in the article by Anton Rusakov , one of the guys of our team. I also note that our PHP team in London is completely Russian-language, so that the adaptation for you will be easier.

In general, pass the online test and we are waiting for the best on July 1 in the Moscow office of Badoo for an interview!

UPD: the test can be passed until June 16 (inclusive). After we begin to select the best.
UPD 2: Event completed. As a result, we invited 28 people for an interview at the office, 5 of them received offers.