Any Melbourne tech companies that use a "Stripe"-like interview process?

April 10, 2014 1:09 AM

I tend to have bad experiences with traditional job interviews. I'm interested in finding out whether there are any tech companies based in Melbourne, Australia, that use an interview process similar to the one used by Stripe.com. Simply, Stripe gets candidates to work on a simulated project (http://www.quora.com/Stripe-company/What-is-the-engineering-interview-process-like-at-Stripe) rather than, say, writing code on a whiteboard.

I've had one "interview" like this and although I didn't end up taking the role, I felt that I was able to demonstrate my skill set infinitely better than with traditional interviews. If anyone knows any companies here in Melbourne that use a process similar to Stripe's, I'd love to find out!

posted by tomargue to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Best answer: Check out ThoughtWorks (full disclosure: I work for TW.) They have offices in Melbourne and cities all over the globe. They focus mostly on enterprise-level development projects, although they also have opportunities for smaller projects, often for companies that have a similar social outlook. TW is a very left-leaning, almost socialist company. Pretty much a flat structure: employees don't have bosses or managers (outside of project managers, but you move from project to project fairly regularly.)

The way they're able to keep such a flat organization is due to their hiring practices: their interview process is considered one of the hardest in the world. For developers, in includes a coding test to be done before you come in and pair with devs to improve/change your work. Very similar to the Stripe interview, but the coding test is only maybe half of the process. Additionally, there are cultural interviews to make sure you'd be a good fit socially as well as general interviews. Then there are also the logic tests/Wonderlic tests/group interviews... I'd say I had to talk to about ten people and do about 4 or 5 hours of tests before I got hired, but it was all done over 2 or 2.5 weeks, so very quickly. The result is that for the most part they only hire people they can trust to get shit done without having some manager breathing down their neck every hour: instead you work with people for whom you want to do good work.

It's a great job. TW is unlike any place I've worked. Check them out.
posted by nushustu at 1:36 AM on April 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks nushustu, ThoughtWorks looks like a challenging and rewarding company. I've read the article you linked to, yes, that's the kind of interview process I do well in :)
posted by tomargue at 2:50 AM on April 10, 2014

Response by poster: Awesome, I see ThouhtWorks also run Hack Night For Humanity. I've been meaning to go to that Hack Night for a while.
posted by tomargue at 3:08 AM on April 11, 2014