real interview stories, told over a cup of tea ♡
Interview Experiences
3935 interview stories from candidates at 857 companies: how each round went, what was asked and how it ended. Every company page links to practice questions in the same style.
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3935 results
- Recruiter Call, Then a Four-Question SQL ScreenRevolut · Data Analyst · Technical Screen · Feb 2026In progress
The recruiter call was pretty standard — they asked why I wanted to apply to Revolut, my past experience, then talked about how they're now moving headquarters to the UAE, a lot of the roles are for continental Europe rather than the UK, it depends on how the interview goes, and they sponsor visas for senior and above, etc. SQL interview questions. The SQL was actually pretty hard — four question…
- Recruiter Screen Goes Cagey Over Comp QuestionsChainlink Labs · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Feb 2026
I'm based in Canada. I mass-applied online and a recruiter set up an intro call. The recruiter was late first, then asked a few questions: self-introduction, tech stack, why I'm looking for a job, the project I was most proud of in the past year, how I handle burnout, how I communicate with the team when remote, and whether I'm really into blockchain / have been following it closely. Maybe it was…
- Recursive URL-Fetching Round Under Time PressureRamp · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Feb 2026
They give you a URL, and you have to call it. The response might contain a new set of URLs, or it might contain other data; then you keep calling whichever URLs come back, recursing/iterating like this until you finally get back "congrats". You don't need to return the path, just the final URL. The problem itself isn't especially hard, but overall it's pretty tedious and practical. During the int…
- Rejected After a Behavioral-Heavy Hiring Manager ScreenAxon · Software Engineer · Other · Feb 2026Rejected
I applied on a whim through LinkedIn Jobs. The first round was an HM screen, mostly chit-chat and behavioral questions. It wasn't the hiring manager for the role I actually applied to, but the manager of a larger group — maybe our personalities just didn't click, because I got rejected. Here are the questions I remember: Why did you choose Axon? Walk me through your career path — what's driven yo…
- Rejected After a Concurrency DeadlockRevolut · Software Engineer · New Grad · Onsite · Feb 2026Rejected
I applied for the New Grad Java Backend Engineer role, base EU. The whole process was 1x OA + 1x Recruiter Screening + 2x VO (virtual onsite). Quick complaint first: I applied in October, and the recruiter didn't reach out until late January... The OA was on HackerRank — two easy coding problems plus a bunch of multiple-choice questions, including some simple algorithm questions and some picture-…
- Rejected After a Rough, Disrespectful Technical ScreenWaymo · Site Reliability Engineer · Technical Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
I got rejected. This interview was for an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) role. The question was roughly this: there's a number line from 0 to 50. Points keep landing on the line, and each point contaminates the region 0.5 to its left and 0.5 to its right of where it lands — i.e., an interval of length 1. Once part of the line is contaminated, it stays contaminated forever. Points can land anywhe…
- Rejected After a Vague K8s Scheduling Tech Depth RoundPinterest · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
Backend Infra The recruiter reached out to me. We chatted about my background, the company culture, that kind of thing. Remote work is allowed, the team does team-building events, and important meetings require you to be onsite. The second round was a chat with the hiring manager, mostly behavioral: am I currently employed, why do I want to leave. Then we went over my background, what I've done o…
- Rejected After an HM Screen Filled In by a Senior Staff EngineerMetropolis · Technical Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
A recruiter from a startup reached out to me on LinkedIn. I figured I'd learn a bit more about it, so I decided to take the interview. The first round was an HM screen, done by a senior staff engineer. He said the team hadn't hired a manager yet, so he was standing in for that role. It was mostly about my projects and behavioral questions. Maybe we just didn't click, because I didn't pass. Here's…
- Rejected After Onsite With No FeedbackStubHub · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Feb 2026Rejected
Coding round: Open discussion about how to improve the recommendation. System design Design an internal chat system for StubHub that also has the ability to send notification emails to customers who haven't logged in for 10 days. Result Two days later I got a notification from the recruiter that I'd failed both the coding and system design rounds. No detailed feedback. For the coding round, I fin…
- Rejected After Solving Both Problems OptimallyArista · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
There were two questions total: one palindrome string problem, one missing number problem. After I finished each one, they asked me for the time and space complexity. There were no resume questions, no other questions, not even a self-introduction. Overall the questions weren't hard. For the palindrome one, I considered the case where the string is "", but I didn't consider the case where it's di…
- Rejected After Two Technical RoundsTesla · Machine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
The first round was with the interviewer. He gave a quick rundown of his background, then asked how to model other agents in the simulation. The coding part was based on an input of shape [batch, num_waypoint, 2], and I had to compute a suffix sum, with output shape [batch, num_waypoint]. I forget the exact follow-up question after that... let me think about it more. The second round was with the…
- Rejected in Both Full-Time and Intern LoopsUber · Data Scientist · Intern · Onsite · Feb 2026Rejected
I got rejected for both their full-time and intern positions — the intern process was rejected after the second (final) round, and the full-time process was rejected after the first round. I don't know what the interviewers were looking for; I felt like I answered every question, and communication went smoothly enough. For the full-time role, the first round jumped straight into a case study afte…
- Research Intern Video Screen That Was Pure LeetCodeMicrosoft · Machine Learning Engineer · Intern · Technical Screen · Feb 2026
Background: currently a student at CMU. Process: I applied online through a mass application, and about two weeks later I got an interview invitation. It was a video interview. What the interview was like: the interviewer was an MLE on the team who had been working for a few years. He was really nice and gave me quite a few hints along the way. Even though this was a research intern role, the int…
- Rocket Lab Software Engineer interview with a one-hour presentation and site tourRocket Lab · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Feb 2026
The process began when a recruiter asked about my availability, and the team moved quickly to arrange the next stages. I had a virtual screening with the hiring manager and engineers from the team, followed by an onsite interview by the end of the month, about three weeks after the initial screening. The onsite was long and structured. It included a one-hour presentation, several interview panels…
- Scale Machine Learning Engineer interview: coding round followed by ML theoryScale · Machine Learning Engineer · Other · Feb 2026Rejected
After speaking with a recruiter, I went through a compact sequence: a manager screen, a coding round, and a final discussion focused on machine learning theory. The process felt broad and deep at the same time, which made it difficult to approach as one straightforward type of interview. Even when I felt comfortable with the technical parts, the theory discussion kept bringing me back to fundamen…
- Smartsheet Software Engineer: 15-minute HR screen on high-traffic systemsSmartsheet · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Feb 2026
My first step was a short HR screening that lasted about 15 minutes. It came through a referral, and the conversation stayed focused on my background rather than puzzles. I talked about what I was doing on my current project, the technology stack I'd used, and how I handled scale and high-traffic situations. The questions were straightforward: what I was responsible for day to day, which tools an…
- Software Engineer at Boeing: DBMS, coding, and work-life balanceBoeing · Software Engineer · Feb 2026
I had a face-to-face interview that focused directly on technical topics. We talked about DBMS concepts and basic coding, and the interviewer was chill and friendly throughout. We also discussed work-life balance at the company, which made the setting feel more human than purely evaluative. Because the technical topics were clear and not overly mysterious, I felt more at ease than I expected in a…
- Solid Through ML and Coding, Tripped Up by Business and StatsTuro · Data Scientist · Onsite · Feb 2026Rejected
Sharing a rejection experience from Turo. The interview process itself was actually pretty good — I could tell that if I'd gotten in, I would have learned a lot. Unfortunately I still got rejected. Round 1 was an HR screen. It was mostly going through my resume, and based on what was on there they'd ask some ML-related questions, like what's the difference between XGBoost and LightGBM. Round 2 wa…
- Solved the Coding Question, Still Rejected in Under 30 MinutesRobinhood · SDE II · Technical Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
Recruiter Call Main topics they asked about: Self-introduction The project I worked on that had the most impact, and my role in it Why I'm interested in Robinhood The top three factors I care about when choosing an offer What I'm looking for in my next role Compensation expectations What other companies I'm interviewing with, and what stage each is at Visa status, tech stack, relocation, etc. Que…
- SQL, Fake Accounts, and an AI Ad-Creation Case Study in the OnsiteMeta · Data Scientist · Onsite · Feb 2026
I just finished my virtual onsite a little while back. I ran into a few questions that other people have already posted about, but with slightly different follow-ups, so I wanted to share. SQL: active_ads. The interviewer was very organized and gave clear instructions. My second question was to find people whose total spend last year was over 1k, then look at what share of their spend this year t…
- Stubhub Software Engineer interview with a shortened project deep diveStubhub · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
I started with a recruiter screen that already felt off. There was a missed call, and after I reached back out, I waited about two weeks just to hear about moving to the next round. When I was scheduled for the hiring manager interview, the hiring manager I was connected with didn't match what the email said. The project deep dive also didn't match the schedule. It was supposed to last 45 minutes…
- Stubhub Software Engineer: email-system design and an early coding cutoffStubhub · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
My process started with a friendly recruiter screen about my background and previous work. I could tell the recruiter was listening for specifics, and we went past the scheduled time because I kept adding context. A couple of weeks later, I still hadn’t heard back, and I eventually received an automated rejection. The technical rounds focused more on practical engineering ideas than on algorithms…
- Surprise Behavioral Block Before a LeetCode Hard Onsite, Ending in an OfferSalesforce · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Feb 2026Offer
My road to a Salesforce MTS offer started in Asia. I began as an intern back home and moved up to Senior Software Engineer there. After that I co-founded a startup and stayed with it until 2022. Then I moved to the U.S. and could not legally work at first because of my work authorization. I did not want to just sit around, so I used the gap on myself. I did an MS in Computer Science through Georg…
- The Voleon Group Data Scientist interview with five technical roundsThe Voleon Group · Data Scientist · HR Screen · Feb 2026Rejected
I started with an HR conversation that was fairly straightforward, mostly about fit and why I was interested. What stood out was how quickly the process moved into a technical sequence. I went through something like five rounds of technical interviews. The HR portion included basic questions such as why I wanted the position. The technical rounds kept coming back to live coding. I was allowed to…
- Three Back-to-Back Interviews After the OAMicrosoft · Data Scientist · Onsite · Feb 2026Offer
The OA was an hour long with two questions, pretty simple. Three days after that I got an interview invite. Three interviews back to back, three hours total, all with very senior people interviewing. The first interviewer worked on software/systems and had me write a problem, roughly medium difficulty. Org chart → Tree. Top-down, level by level → BFS. "Show the entire layer first" → Queue. The se…
- Three Back-to-Back Virtual Onsites in One DayMicrosoft · Applied Scientist · Intern · Onsite · Feb 2026Offer
Position: Applied Science: PhD Internship Opportunities - Redmond HR emailed to invite me to interview, no OA. VO1 (02/04): a 30 minute simple chat, talked about past projects, asked about some details. Then scheduled three back-to-back VOs on the same day (02/19), each 45 minutes, with a 15 minute break between adjacent interviews. VO2: an applied scientist, also asked about technical details of…
- Three Case Rounds, No A/B Testing BackgroundDoorDash · Data Scientist · Onsite · Feb 2026
I'd seen a lot of phone screen reports for this role and passed it pretty easily, but the onsite was like the reports I'd read about — genuinely hard, and unlike anything I'd seen before. My background is as a DS who has always worked on modeling, with a little bit of product analytics experience mixed in. I don't have hands-on experience running A/B tests, so on the onsite, the experiment design…
- Three Technical Rounds and GoogleynessGoogle · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Feb 2026
First round: Technical interview Question: Add and search for words in a Trie. Because I had limited preparation time, I mainly reviewed common topics such as graph theory and dynamic programming, but I did not cover Tries. The problem was roughly about adding and searching for words. A Trie supports fast word lookup because of its tree structure, and the return behavior needed attention. I told…
- Three Technical Rounds, Pulled From the PoolTikTok · Machine Learning Engineer · New Grad · Technical Screen · Feb 2026
(Project questions omitted) Round 1: Our current business needs a multimodal large model to caption videos — how do you ensure deployment stays within compute and memory constraints? Follow-up: if you already have captions and embeddings, and a brand advertiser wants to quickly find relevant videos to watermark, how would you speed that up? What is overfitting, and how do you mitigate it? Coding:…
- Trexquant Investment Data Scientist interview with ML, DSA, and onsite superdayTrexquant Investment · Data Scientist · Online Assessment · Feb 2026
My interview process started when HR reached out. I then completed an online assessment covering ML and DSA style material, followed by a technical question round with one or two LeetCode problems in the medium to hard range. I expected more direct data science or machine learning questions, but those topics didn't really come up beyond the assessment. The next stage was an onsite superday. It we…
