I found the role through a 3rd party headhunting firm. I was given a take-home assignment to complete, which I submitted in a week, but then heard no feedback from the company for another 10 days, despite a few follow-ups. I eventually heard that Duolingo decided to pass, with no given reason, apparently "per company policy". Very puzzling and frustrating; I spent a good amount of time polishing up the project, and couldn't even get a canned cut-and-paste response as feedback. Side-note: they supposedly offer $500 to candidates who complete the take-home project, but the processing has been very slow, once again despite follow-ups.

General describe your background and why you would like to work for Duolingo. After that is a take-home assignment. Pull an unstructured JSON document, parse it and load it into a game. I have no idea how I did on this. After hours of programming, following Duolingos own design guidelines, creating app icons, documenting, and testing I was turned down. When asking for feedback I was told: "Unfortunately due to confidentiality reasons and company policy, we are unable to give feedback at this time." How is this information confidential? I have no clue. I guess as advice make it good, super good, but there are limited guidelines so... If you have no care for your own time and want to apply for a company who feels the same way, then by all means apply.

Not worth the time. The initial screening process was quite nice. They gave me a "take home" programming assignment of which I was to fetch a file from a server (the directions were very vague on how to store said file), display some content contained within a file, and execute some game based with a self defined UI (the directions were vague on how the UI was implemented). The screener said that it would take 10 - 12 hours to complete the assignment. It did end up taking me about that long to do it in an object-oriented, well organized way. The quick and dirty way would take around 4 to 5 hours if anyone is interested to know. After spending said time and waiting for a reply, I was given the old "you're not what we are looking for, thanks" message. When I inquired about feedback, they were unwilling to provide me with feedback. I know that I may not be the best developer in the world, but, generally, if you are going to ask candidates to put in 10-12 hours of their life into your interview process, then you should give them the common courtesy of feedback. In my short 8 year experience in the field, I've never dealt with a company that cared so little for a candidate's time and energy. Honestly, that's what compelled me to write the review. If this is how they treat prospective employees, then you have to wonder how people are treated within the company. Just don't waste your time with the interview. There are lots of other companies, such as LinkedIn, Pandora, ect. , with robust technical interviews that will at least give you a little something for your time. I've taken some jobs from these and been denied by others with something that I could learn. I'd just skip Duolingo completely. Have some self respect as a professional and don't waste time with those that don't value yours. Thank you very much for reading my experiences and review. I hope it helps someone.