J'ai passé un entretien chez Voleon (Berkeley, CA)
Entretien
My interview process started with a phone screening. The interviewer was another PhD in a similar area, and he asked some statistics and math questions. During the conversation, I got the impression that he did not particularly like the job himself, so I asked him about it directly. He said that the role was not very flexible, and that new hires were initially assigned to groups somewhat randomly. In his view, some people ended up in groups that were clearly not a good fit for them.
The next day, I was invited to the first part of the virtual onsite, which consisted of two rounds: one in statistics and one in machine learning. The statistics round was conducted by a statistics PhD. The ML round was conducted by someone hired for a background similar to mine, so although he did not seem to know much more about the broader process, the conversation happened to align quite well with my own area.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
The interviewer asked several theoretical querstions about Stats and ML
Recruiter => probability / puzzles first round. It required some cleverness that I tunnel-visioned and missed, things like scaling and symmetry. I had 95% the right idea immediately, then went in a different direction, and the interviewer didn't prod me to complete it.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
Q1: doubly stochastic matrices properties, certain geometry question about points on a 2D grid
Total breakdown of professionalism at every level of the process. Irresponsible and dishonest conduct at the highest levels of the firm. The people who run Voleon are often confused about matters of fact. It’s perhaps no surprise that I only hear about people leaving this firm.
Questions d'entretien [1]
Question 1
Explain k-means clustering and do a related computation.
