Real, anonymous reports from people who interviewed for Software Engineer at Roku, newest first and distilled into what to expect across the loop.
After a recruiter call, I was scheduled for a tech conversation with an engineer and then a HackerRank assessment. The coding interview felt like it was tightly time-boxed, and during an implementation discussion I picked what I thought was the most practical approach for a fast interview flow—there was a moment of disagreement, but the engineer eventually accepted my reasoning for why I was choosing that path.
I started with a recruiter call focused on general work experience and my tech stack, and it stayed pretty standard from my perspective. Then they asked about compensation drawn from my current organization. I paused because I wasn’t sure what I was allowed to disclose and told them I’d need to check with HR about any NDA constraints around salary information.
The initial recruiter call often focuses on past experience and compensation, but candidates reported abrupt rejections based on disclosure issues rather than fit, leading to a frustrating start to the process.
Candidates experienced a mix of coding challenges, often in a LeetCode-style format, with some reporting a focus on algorithms and data structures, while others noted a lack of clarity on expectations for the coding language to be used.
The overall interview process varied, with some candidates experiencing smooth, organized rounds while others faced chaotic scheduling and unexpected cancellations, leading to a sense of unpredictability.
Many candidates noted a blend of behavioral and technical questions, with some interviews feeling more like conversations aimed at understanding thought processes rather than strict evaluations, though this varied by interviewer.
A common concern was the lack of constructive feedback throughout the process, with many candidates feeling left in the dark about their performance and the reasons behind their rejections.
Candidates often left the process feeling that their performance did not align with the final decisions, leading to reflections on the fairness and transparency of the evaluation criteria used by interviewers.