J'ai postulé en ligne. J'ai passé un entretien chez Upstart (San Jose, CA) en juil. 2025
Entretien
I applied online. A recruiter reached out to me and scheduled a call. The call was a weird experience for me as the recruiter was asking me for my references from my current company manager, which I declined. I mentioned I can get a reference from my ex-team lead, but she wanted my manager's reference. I thought she wouldn't move me forward, but after a week, all of a sudden received an OA to complete, and they wanted it done in 2 days lol. After that, I was asked to schedule a hiring manager round. The manager asked me questions related to my project in detail and a few other questions. I felt the interview went quite well, but the next day an automated response came that they're not moving forward.
I was looking at other Glassdoor reviews of this company and didn't find a single review where someone actually accepted the offer, so I got an idea from that the kind of company this is.
Interview experience is overall very good. You can lead the discussion but they have certain questions to ask. Can choose any tools for diagram. Really nice people and very polite.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
Design a Online chess system design in first round.
J'ai postulé via une agence de recrutement. J'ai passé un entretien chez Upstart (Los Angeles, CA) en mai 2026
Entretien
Interview consisted of 2 recruiter calls, 1 technical coding screen with 2 LC Medium level problems but with decent follow up questions, then onsite that was: Systems Design, Hiring Manager/Behavioral, and Product Development interview. After passing on-site there was an exec VP chat.
J'ai postulé via un recruteur. Le processus a pris 1 jour. J'ai passé un entretien chez Upstart en avr. 2026
Entretien
What a weird interview, or recruiter call.
Recruiter joined the call and got my name wrong, so knew immediately this was going to go sideways. They told me absolutely nothing about the company what they do, what they’re looking for.
Then got basic questions about my career. The recruiter couldn’t really grasp that one man teams really do exist at disorganized companies, so I think they had trouble understanding what full stack actually means outside of upstart. They kept rewording questions trying get me to explain what my teammates do, when in reality I explained that I don’t have any.
Then was told of the next interview steps. A take home coding challenge, then a virtual onsite with atleast 3 more interviews and a live coding challenge. Then interviews (more than one) with team members. How many interviews are we doing here? Then they will ask for references, and doubled down on how they take those seriously. Lol, okay?
I was honestly out on Upstart after hearing the interview steps. Wasn’t surprised to get rejected 24hrs later.