I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at Uber (Amsterdam (Netherlands)) in October 2016.
Interview
The process was straightforward: Applied through referral, waited for 3 weeks before someone got in touch with me. Then a 20-minutes sell call. Then waited for another 4 weeks. (My overall rating would have been positive if not for these 50 days' delay)
I contacted referrer who seems to have escalated this. Phone interview was setup in 4 days. Then 2 days later, I was invited to meet in person. I met them in the same week. 4 interviewers. The interviewers did not probe deep, perhaps I gave elaborate answers in the beginning. I had a bit of struggle conveying details, so I had to resort to pulling out work samples to help them understand. It gave me an impression that their experience was okay, but lacking depth. They could barely scratch the surface of the value that I brought to the table. Now, looking back, I am not as surprised by what transpired after the interviews.
The offer came through as promised. The struggles were the following:
No one had spoken to me about salary till the last call. The offer was (supposedly) bench-marked on my current pay, but upon a few hours of research it was clear that the offer fell short by every yardstick of comparison to the cost of labour and cost of living.
The biggest put-offs was however the relocation benefits. The offer expected an international move with a reimbursement cap of Euros 7000. This seemed like an incomplete offer at first. Having moved internationally in the past, I know the cost of moving a family of 4 is many times of what was offered. The reason cited was that finance thought that was enough.
Ironically, every person that I met said that Uber was an extremely data driven company. The offer decline ended with me providing with a relocation estimate from a service provider that indicated that cost was certainly well over what Uber's finance "thought" was "enough". I almost wanted to write to the recruiter asking if he had any data to back-up finance's claims, but then, that would have been inconsequential anyway.
Salary negotiation was stonewalled. So I did not hesitate declining the offer. In retrospect, and based on the content of the emails I received after the offer, it seemed to me that the role being offered was not at the right level. I recently took time to dig through past employees of my company that jumped ships, and it looks like my guess was quite right; and therefore my decision to decline the offer was perhaps the right thing to do.
Here is a summary based on my observation:
Pros:
+ Committed individuals. The RC seemed the most motivated of all, everyone else looked somewhat tired.
+ Start-up culture, lots of open ended problems to be solved
+ Timeliness (only after things really started moving)
Cons:
- Interviews lacked depth. A smart individual can BS their way through, really :)
- Inability to understand the value brought to the table
- Lack of communication initially. 3 weeks from application to first call. Again, 4 weeks between sell call and next communication. That, (I guess) was after escalating
- Relocation benefits
- An overall uncompetitive offer package
I think they could've saved all the time, effort, the many follow-ups I had to do by having asked me about money in the first conversation. Evidently, Uber Amsterdam is not near the 50th percentile in the league of companies they are commonly compared with.
In summary: Uber does not seem any different from most other companies that are clueless about how to do what they want to do. I had high regards for Uber, but now, I would hesitate recommending to others if they were to consider them as their next employer. They may want to take this feedback and get their act together by not wasting time trying to solve problems that are beyond their scope of knowledge.
Uber needs to get experts on board first. In that area, clearly they are short-staffed. :)
It is a pity the way things worked out. I was really looking forward to a long term association with the company, but it is equally unfortunately how Uber decided to deal with things.