@WalmartLabs hosted a recruiting event for onsite interviews in downtown Seattle.
Prior to the onsite interview, I had one phone interview for about an hour. It was a typical phone interview; the interviewer asked some coding questions for the string manipulation, design questions for singleton (with threading) and so on. It was a standard phone interview.
After that, I was invited to the onsite interview with 5 different engineers. @Labs invited all interviewees to a social event to show what they have been up to, the challenges they are facing and some possible approaches. Better yet, I got to meet with interviewers, so the experience would be like a breeze.
The onsite interview was also a standard one. From what I discussed with other candidates, our first three questions were the same, and the rest were up to the interviewers (so it seemed). I was asked for questions like LRU(design/implement) and so on with some design questions and math/probability. From my experience, it's very similar to Amazon interview with less design question (perhaps that's because many interviewers were from Amazon).
Couple of days later I received a phone call from the recruiter about the result. They needed to do a "bar-raiser" (yes, the term is borrowed from Amazon if you know what it is) before extending the offer. I complied accordingly and received an offer couple days after that. The offer negotiation was, well, you know how the offer negotiation would be. I had other opportunities from other companies at the time, but @Labs eventually gave me an offer I can't refuse.
Overall, I think the experience was positive. I wasn't as interested before the social event and just wanted to hear them out. "Walmart?" Right? I am a software engineer all my career, and I am not going to wear the blue vest and code. After the social event, I was impressed with the ambition and the determination that Walmart has to put in to turn their e-commerce around. I mean, you've read Amazon couple times in my comments (the recruiting event happened in Seattle, go figure..), and Walmart surely is trying really hard to catch up with Amazon. I found people I talked to, no matter during the social event or the actual interview, are genuinely passion about what they do, and they believe they can make some changes.