IXL Learning
Company Background
OUR MISSION At IXL Learning, we are passionate about creating and supporting the best educational technology possible. We develop groundbreaking products used by millions of learners, from children to adults. People count on us to make learning as effective as it can be, and we are deeply committed to solving the real-world challenges faced by students and teachers around the planet.
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY FIRST AND FOREMOST At IXL Learning, we invent new educational technologies that reshape the teaching and learning process. We believe in the power of technology, and we relish the challenge of building elegant and creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
REAL PROBLEMS, REAL SOLUTIONS We take the power of technology and apply it to huge, important issues in education today. And through technology, we create lasting solutions—millions of students and teachers making our products part of their lives and seeing real results.
ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE When you know your work is being showcased in classrooms around the world, you make extra sure that it's designed, implemented, tested and rolled out flawlessly. We pride ourselves on engineering excellence, and our users sure appreciate it!
EDUCATION
OUR MISSION: SOLVING REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION We are passionate about creating and supporting the best educational technology possible. We strive to develop groundbreaking products and solutions that no one else would dream to come up with.
HELPING TEACHERS TEACH AND STUDENTS LEARN We develop groundbreaking products used by millions of learners, from children to adults. People count on us to make learning as effective as it can be, and we are deeply committed to solving the real-world challenges faced by students and teachers around the planet.
IMPROVING LEARNING ITSELF We look beyond the specific problems of today to see the bigger picture, with the ultimate goal of improving learning itself. How can we help everyone learn more deeply and more completely? How can we make learning better?
PRODUCTS
OUR PRESENT IXL Learning products are used in classrooms and homes in more than 190 countries around the world. We touch the lives of millions of teachers and learners daily—from a 2-year-old starting to count, to a university student tackling a foreign language, from teachers creating educational games for their class, to parents reviewing concepts with their kids. Our IXL Maths product alone is used by over 10% of US schoolchildren, who have answered a whopping 40 billion questions to date!
OUR PAST IXL Learning has a stellar track record of success. Since our first product became an overnight hit in 1998, we've launched numerous innovations in areas ranging from elementary English language to mobile maths to university-level foreign languages. We've developed substantial customer expertise in our field, which we continue to hone thanks to our huge and varied user base.
OUR FUTURE We are in a tremendously exciting period of rapid growth. Everything we've achieved so far gives us tons of momentum, but we're just getting started. We're dreaming big and charging full speed ahead, continuing to innovate and develop whole new product categories. The possibilities are limitless!
PEOPLE
VIBRANT WORK CULTURE IXLers are smart, intellectually curious, dedicated, self-motivated, passionate, friendly and fun to work with. Picture all the people you've ever really enjoyed collaborating with. Those are the high-quality people we're surrounding ourselves with as we grow our company. We work in a beautiful office, but we also do lots of fun things together outside of it.
INVESTING IN OUR PEOPLE IXL has long been dedicated to helping team members grow and develop. After all, if we've gone to all the trouble of bringing high-quality people on board, we definitely want to see them flourish! And especially with our rapid growth and expansion, there are plentiful opportunities to learn new skills, own bigger projects and grow into leadership roles.
WORKING TOGETHER TO MAKE AN IMPACT Of course, great people can go anywhere, so why do they choose IXL? Well, any current IXLer will tell you that it's thrilling to work on something you truly believe in, and it's incredibly fulfilling to feel that you're really making an impact every day. Together, we are making a big difference in education, and that's exciting to all of us.
Product
IXL
PRACTICE THAT FEELS LIKE PLAY Practice makes perfect, and IXL makes maths and English language practice fun! IXL sets a new standard for online learning, offering unlimited, algorithmically generated questions; real-time analytical reports; and dynamic scoring to encourage mastery. Released in 2007, it has since become the world's most popular subscription-based learning site for kindergarten 1 through higher 2. With more than 4,500 unique and challenging skills to master, IXL offers a dynamic and enjoyable environment suitable for any learning style. Students who use IXL are succeeding like never before.
Behavior Questions
1. What have done in the past and what have you learned?
I've been an iOS developer for about 8 years now. I've worked on several kinds of apps in the past, e.g pohto editing app, ecommerce app I'm currently working on two apps, one pro app for healthcare professionals to manage their consultations and connect with other professionals, and one app for patient to access the healthcare network. I've also built a few games in my spare time with my friends.
I think there are a few things that I've learned from my past experience: First, good communication is the key to success for a team. Second, keep learning new technology and improving yourself, don't let yourself get into the confort zone. Third, how to better prioritize the project and task at hand
2. Why IXL Learning is a great fit for you?
Firstly, I've been an iOS developer for about 8 years now, I've been through the entire lifecycle of app development from concept design to app distribution. So I think my professional skills is a good match for this position.
Secondly, I'm passionate about online education and educational technology. I started learning my very first online course back in college. It's a open course from Stanford teaching you how to make iOS apps, that's basically where my personal career starts. Over the course of my professional career, I took a lot of online cs courses. They allow me to keep improving myself.
So being able to work on something that could reshape the teaching and learning process is a huge motivation for me. And I want to work on something I personally believe in, and being able to see the impact I made in education every day really is exciting to me.
3. Why you are passionate about education and edtech?
I want to share a story about my personal education. I studied electronic engineering back in college which I have no interest in. I came across an open course from stanford, teaching you how to build a iOS app. I don't have any computer science background at that moment, but I got really interested in building apps. That's how my professional career started. Over the course of past few years, I started to build my own cs degree completely from open courses.
That's the reason I'm passionate about education and edtech.
4. Be ready to provide examples of group and individual projects, education-related experiences
5. Why you want to work specifically at IXL Learning?
6. Be knowledgeable about our product, the company, and the competitive landscape
7. Learn more about our products, such as IXL and our newest addition—Sugarcane. https://blog.ixl.com/2017/07/10/sugarcane-named-one-of-aasls-best-websites-for-teaching-learning/
8. 说一个你遇到过的 challenge 和你怎么解决的，可以 untechnical。
9. Since when have you started programming? Why are you passion about writing programs
Coding
LRU Cache
Unique Paths
Unique Paths II
median of two sorted arrays
Triangle
Number of Atoms
Course Schedule
task scheduler
What are you looking for when you join a new company?
I've been developing mobile apps for years now, and I'm looking for a position where I could continue to improve my skills.
Another thing that's really important to me is the chance to impact people's lives and make a big difference through my work. I’m always motivated by being able to see the impact of my work on other people.
And, I’m definitely looking for a position where I could solve real world problems. I don't want to let myself get too comfortable, I want to keep growing. Being at a company where I can grow and work toward something I care about really matters to me.
Tell me about yourself
I'm currently working as an iOS developer at MyDoc, a start-up company that is trying to simplify healthcare in Singapore. I have been working here for almost two years now. My main responsibility in this position is to develop and maintain two iOS apps. One pro app for healthcare professionals to manage their consultations and connect with other professionals, and one app for patient to access the healthcare network.
I've been working on the apps for about two years. I redesign and overhaul the entire app using MVVM archetecture and ReactiveCocoa. I also implement the data persistant layer using Realm. For network layer, I decouple the fat big singleton into smaller parts. And I'm using fastlane to simplify the process of app deployment and distribution.
Questions To Ask
1. Are you using swift or objective-c in the project?
2. How big is the team, how it is structured?
3. What are you guys currently working on ?
4. What's your biggest challenge working on the product?
5. What kind of architecture do you guys use?
6. What kind of custom experience to you provide? How does it affect the product?