When I saw initially the 2.3 rate on Glassdor for ActiveVideo I was a little bit circumspect about it, but I wanted to go further and apply. And then the slow and irritating process began.
I was contacted back by the company after few days with an online test on Codility in which I scored 88%, due to some performance penalty on one of the problems (probably because the use of C++ STL map was a little bit slower). After one week I asked the HR responsible for my application to give me a feedback. It took days up to a week to come back with a reply that I "qualified" for the next round: a skype interview.
The Skype interview went well and I had a very nice discussion about the product with a manager. I waited a week for their answer, but nothing came back. Again I wrote HR directly about the status of my application. Few days later, a reply came that given the test results and the first round of interviews we can proceed to the face to face interview in Hilversum, Netherlands (close to Amsterdam). Even though I worked in the Netherlands, at that time I was back in my home country and I needed to be flown in the Netherlands for the interview. After a ping-pong of e-mails, finally they setup a flight and a one night hotel.
The first interview at their office was with the same HR person that I had the e-mailexchange who projected/displayed the same attitude during e-mail conversations. Bored, uninterested in anything we discussed, relaying the same text that probably he says to each candidate.
The second round was with a team leader and an engineer of one of the departments. We discussed my professional background, programming languages, and Scala. Then they asked me how I would implement the shuffling cards problem, same like a casino dealer shuffle the deck of cards. An old problem that has many implications and solutions. I tried to explain few of them and eventually they were fine with a sub-optimal solution: meaning to rewrite the values in the vector with new random ones that were checked against a set of unique values each time. Imagine the copy-constructions and destructions of objects inside that vector. But they were fine with that.
The third one was with a very nice engineer and the manager that I had the Skype interview. This was the best part: they were both smart, open, cool, interested in discussing solving problems from different angles. I would have loved to work in their team.
The last one was with a VP which was very constructive and well structured. I liked this last round also.
My general impression is that I did well overall, though we know that the self-feedback and the perception of others can be different. I'm fine with that. Also I know that the Dutch companies seek to find also cultural fitting to the company: how well you as a person communicate, how much you're interested in the quality of the products (all technical interviews were emphasizing the need for testing), how well you collaborate with the others. I was warned by the HR person in the prologue of that interviewing day that it's usually hard to get to the company. But my feel was that I was not under their expectations either.
What really bothered me is that I have never gotten back a reply from them. Even though they told me they will announce me within days, after a week I pinged the HR again asking for feedback. Complete silence. I waited for another days (it was before Christmas) and I even talked on Skype with the manager that I had the first round of interviews (he was still in my contacts). He turned to be again a very nice guy and he apologized on behalf of the company for this rudeness and he told me that he will talk to HR to give me an answer. I don't know if he did or not, but by now no answer came from ActiveVideo. They flew me in to Amsterdam, paid for accommodation and booked a half day of interview meetings and they couldn't even write a short, 10 seconds rejection e-mail. I finally agree with the negative reviews of current employees with regard with lack of respect to people. However I have to emphasize once again a group of nice people for their sense of doing things right. After all, ActiveVideo's product, by the book, looks quite compelling.
