Denver's hottest downtown workplace ... is MapQuest. After being enticed into applying several times and taking an on-line coding tests, I finally went in for a interview. This time it was a short phone screen, then an interview in the office. This Google wanna-be has everything. Free snacks, toys, props, yoga, kamikazes, a massage chair, polished concrete floors, vitamin water, that snooty apple-user vibe, and half of an old boat at the front door. The office theme is either Gilligan's Island or an ill-fated spin-off of The Internship. They say to dress comfortably because everyday is Friday at MQ. Business casual is over-dressed when your would-be female manager dresses for an interview in a cut-off Belichick hoodie. What a way to represent your company to potential employees. If you want to dress for work like you're a poor college student or share mice with the guy who bikes 10-km to work - this place is for you! Did I mention the free snacks? They are very proud of that for some reason. The interview was more are you cool and nerdy enough to be in our club than skills assessment. Do you do it like we do, because we do it right. And, everything works better on a MacBook - everyone just knows that, right? Do you regularly attend user groups? Overall - disappointing, pretentious, and unprofessional.

As a previous interviewer and the now being an active contractor, I will say the process is very fair for both parties. An interview should give both parties the opportunity to make a good decision on whether to pursue an opportunity and I believe MapQuest did a really good job of that. Most interviews for developer positions will include some form of code test. The at home code test was excellent in showing general development knowledge and problem solving skills without being lame and asking ridiculously impossible or tedious questions. The in person interview was also very timely and fair. I was able to easily display my skill set and leave them with the knowledge they needed to choose to hire me or not. I also was given the opportunity to ask employees of different skillsets and roles various questions that I found to be important. Lastly because i was able to meet with several members of the team, I was able to get a good sense of the culture. I'm a big culture person so it was important for me to know what i was looking at. I found the process to be fair and timely, I only spend about 2 hours and they got back to me literally that day. That mean i went really through the entire process in 2 days! I don't know what more you would want from an interview process. I will definitely take some notes and reuse some stuff from it. I also want to take a shot at the Mac shop comment someone else posted, that's just ridiculous.