TikTok Shop Software Engineer Interview Experience: A disputed reasoning path

I started strongly in the sense that I solved the main LeetCode problem as well as I could, but the interview quickly became uncomfortable. The interviewer kept pulling me into the details of what I said and how I justified it. What threw me off was that, after I gave what felt like a solid answer, the interviewer pushed a sub-optimal approach as the right direction. The repeated follow-ups made…

Shared by a candidate · reported Jul 2026. Interview formats change; use it as a guide, not a script.