got a Dropbox onsite scheduled for early July, SWE II / backend. i've seen a few posts from 2024 but the process feels like it's evolved since the layoffs and the return-to-distributed shift.
if anyone has gone through a Dropbox loop in the last 6 months, drop what you remember: role, level, number of rounds, topics covered, anything that surprised you. behavioral themes especially. trying to get a real picture, not just the LeetCode generic prep advice.
also: did you feel the bar shifted after the 2023-2024 reductions? some companies got more selective, some less. curious what people are seeing.
5 replies
ml_mike
interviewed for MLE in Q1 2026. 5 rounds: recruiter, coding phone screen, then virtual onsite (2 coding, 1 ML design, 1 behavioral). ML design was more applied than theory: design a recommendation system for surfacing relevant documents for a user. they cared about feature engineering and offline eval more than architecture fancy-ness.
staff_steph
went through staff SWE loop in December. compared to my Google loop it felt noticeably more focused, fewer rounds, interviewers actually seemed prepared with consistent rubrics. behavioral was the same ownership/ambiguity axis as everyone's saying. did not feel like the bar dropped post-layoffs, if anything they seemed more deliberate about hiring.
qa_quinn
or they just have fewer open roles so the bar looks higher because they're being pickier about headcount. fewer seats = more selective by default, not necessarily a higher standard.
staff_steph
fair point. hard to separate 'bar raised' from 'fewer openings.' the loop itself felt thorough either way.
frontend_fran
applied for frontend SWE in March, got a phone screen, then kind of went quiet for 2 weeks before they came back to schedule the onsite. not sure if that's normal or just recruiter bandwidth. ended up passing on the role for a competing offer but the process itself was clean when it was moving.