It is depressing when you look into any of these companies because the company they keep is telling. They are all looking to cash in at our expense.
Thomas Evans ~ President and Chief Executive Officer of Bankrate, Inc and a key SS board member
The conversation in the following clip starting @ 2:30 is interesting.
Thomas Evans interview is interesting especially when you look at SS reviews at glassdoor from current SS employees.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Shutterstock-RVW1046893.htm
It used to be betterCurrent Employee Reviewed Aug 2, 2011Pros Perks: food, chair massages, yoga (for tech only) in the elevator bay, espresso machine, get to browse photos at work when bored, innovative, awesome coworkers, the view from the bathroom.
Cons Negatives: Management secrecy and poor communication, lack of opportunities, very limited equity, located in Fi Di, top positions filled by VC picks, fun lookin hallways lead to drab cube farmsAdvice to Senior Management The company is either a startup or larger company with corporate structure and people in 3 piece suits. It is presently the latter dressed as the former.
Conversation about programing on the site.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Shutterstock-Interview-RVW597821.htm"
Shutterstock Developer InterviewPosted Aug 7, 2010 1 of 1 people found this helpful
No Offer Interviewed in New York, NY Jun 2010 Reviewed Aug 7, 2010
Interview Details I first got called in for the first round phone interview, asking three questions regarding to their own database designs. So, I'm asked about tackling their problems that they have had problems for months. The first question was about how would you design the database structure involving meta data for an image. They had one basic table about the images. Anyways, the other two questions were related, and I could answer them well. This one lasted 45 minutes.
A week later, I got called in for a second round phone interview. It was geared more towards my experience and some Perl questions. I told him specifically that I have written object oriented Perl (OOP) a while ago, and I couldn't remember what I wrote.
He also asked me where to look for if I have questions about using Perl. I told him CPAN, which seems to be a satisfying answer. Anyhow, the interview lasted about 45 minutes.
About two weeks later, I was scheduled for the final round interview at their office. It was to my surprise because I thought I failed miserably in Perl because I haven't used it for years ever since I moved to PHP, but I also said that I can catch up really quick. Anyways, it's held at the financial district in Manhattan.
I went to that building asking for Shutterstock. The attendant called checked the reservation list, and said I wasn't in the list, so he called up the office and neither did the persons at the office know who I am -- as if I was an unexpected guest. I was asked why I'm here; I simply replied that I was here for the interview. The attendant passed my info to Shutterstock, and yet they still didn't know me. It was unexpected, but whatever: I waited for about 20min, and finally the guy came down from the elevator and greeted me and asked what position I was interviewed with. I said developer. He shrugged and led me to the interview site.
The interview started out with two guys. they discussed about my experience
, and finally they moved on to SQL stuff written on the white board. I explained everything to them, and they were very pleased. Then they moved on to the design question, showing me a few pictures from Shutterstock, I mean, istock photo site. They basically asked me how do I tackle the problem that they're facing: given a home in the search query -- how do you determine whether the picture is the actual home, not part of the home such as a door. I explained a few ways. The first way is through keywords and the second way is through pattern recognition by determining the object heuristically. There's no right or wrong answer to this.
Lastly, the guy asked me to fix a bug on Shutterstock. It's related to the wrong categories name for different languages. He asked me to trace out the source of the problem. It uses Mason HTML with Perl. Since I've never used Mason HTML, I was pretty slow finding the problem. It took me about 15min to locate the error. I was led to another room where I meet two more people.
Over there, I was asked another design question, like how do I design geomapping routes. Basically, they would like to know how "google maps" does the routing from San Fransisco to New York City. I explained to them. And, that concludes the last interview.
I waited for two weeks, and was notified that I didn't get an offer. These are the two reasons:
1. My Perl skill is not extensive enough.
2. I don't brainstorm on algorithms.
For the first one, the only time they asked about my Perl experience was in the second round phone interview. So they cannot judge me based on that without giving me an actual Perl test in the one on one interview. As for the second one, I was never asked about algorithms. I was only asked to explain my approach to the problems. No algorithms were ever asked or focused.
From most of the questions here, they were trying to use me to tackle their site problems. Basically, the company is using the interviews to solve some of the problems. They never intend to hire anyone from the beginning. The interviewees are like their free consultants, which is why they're "hiring" ALL positions.Interview Question Given a search query, how would you determine the most relevant images for that search query. For example, if someone types in "house" as the search query, how do rank "beach house" higher than something like a door, as both of them relate to house? Answer Question
Other Details - I applied through a recruiter and the process took 4 weeks."
