RejectedOnsite

Passed Five Rounds but Lost to an Internal Hire, Plus Coupang, Databricks, and Mistral AI Along the Way

AppleSoftware Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Sep 2025

Background: 5.5 years of experience, all of it at second-tier companies doing infra. Goal: mainly looking to move into AI-related work. Target level is Google L5 equivalent or above. I'm not afraid of a heavy workload, I like healthy competition. Timeline: started grinding problems and sending out resumes from early February, and by early June had gradually started getting offers and wrapped up i…

Shared by a candidate · reported Sep 2025. Interview formats change; use it as a guide, not a script.