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
- Four Onsite Rounds, All Staff-Level InterviewersTesla · Backend Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026
Phone screen, 45 min: design a ticket-master system. We went deep on how to prevent double booking. The interviewer also cared a lot about UX — what the API returns, what seat map the frontend shows once it gets that response, etc. Onsite: each round was 45 min. The email told me who the interviewer was and their title, but not which round would be system design vs. past-experience. It was schedu…
- Four Onsite Rounds, No OfferRamp · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jan 2026Rejected
Coding (I'm posting the full original question) Given a list of flights: Part 1: get_user_with_most_flights() Part 2: get_user_location(time) The problem itself wasn't hard — a classic binary search question. But I had to figure out on my own how to import the file (the file and the test weren't even in the same folder), and I wasn't that familiar with writing tests in pytest, so I spent some tim…
- Four Onsite Rounds, Rejected After the System Design RoundAmazon · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026Rejected
Timeline: referral, then a recruiter call two weeks later that set up the phone screen for a week after that, then the onsite (four rounds) a week after that, and a rejection two days after the onsite. Overall impression: the coding difficulty wasn't that high, basically all LeetCode Medium, and every round asked Leadership Principles (LP) questions. I think what got me in the end was System Desi…
- Four Onsite Rounds, Rejected on System DesignCoinbase · Frontend Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026Rejected
I interviewed in March. I couldn't find a virtual onsite interview writeup for Coinbase Frontend Staff level on the forum. There were four rounds total. The questions themselves weren't that hard, but the bar was high. Tech Execution: Write a dropdown component. I'd suggest looking at a UI library's props beforehand, something like Ant Design. In this round you need to pay attention to reusable d…
- Full Onsite Loop, Then Grilled About Using AI MoreDoorDash · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jan 2026Rejected
DoorDash's full loop. I felt like their question bank isn't very big — pretty much everything is covered by write-ups here already. Specifically, the phone screen with the interviewer: dasher_pay. Same problem that's already been posted here, so pay attention to handling the input datetime. I used a few states to control the order's status. I forgot the follow-up, but again, the situations posted…
- GPS Trivia in the Recruiter Screen, Stuck on "move" in the OAJerry.Ai · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Jan 2026
Recruiter Screen The interviewer was really friendly. She started by walking me through the company, then asked if I had any questions for her. In the middle she threw in an unusual question: how GPS works / the underlying design. Roughly, how GPS works, how the signal propagates, and why errors happen — for example the difference between the satellite's atomic clock and the clock on your phone.…
- HackerRank OA Then a Tradeoff-Heavy Phone ScreenUber · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jan 2026
I finished the Uber OA and did the phone screen too, so sharing both. The OA was on HackerRank, camera required. First question: a Hard DP problem, a variant of a well-known Jump Game problem where the jump-step rule was changed to a prime-number condition. I got stuck for a bit but eventually worked it out. Second question: Pipeline Throughput, solved with binary search on the answer. You're giv…
- HackerRank OA, Then a Robotic HM Screen and a RejectionPoint72 · AI Engineer · HR Screen · Jan 2026Rejected
A recruiter reached out to me first. After the phone screen, they sent a HackerRank OA — three questions total, 90 minutes. The first question was a lot like one I'd seen in another thread, just with the scenario swapped out. The second one was a LeetCode question. The third was a prompt-engineering question with five sub-parts. Basically: you're an Olympic champion's coach and you need to help t…
- HR Call Through a Full Power DayCapital One · Data Scientist · Onsite · Jan 2026
Round 1: HR Call Asked about "why this company," and otherwise it was just some basic logistics confirmation. Round 2: Data Challenge This was done on CodeSignal — about 4 questions total, using numpy, pandas, sklearn, etc. It was split into a few parts: data cleaning, feature selection, and model building. Finishing the data-processing part within the time limit (90 min) was fairly difficult; yo…
- HR Ghosted for a Month Before the Virtual OnsiteExpedia · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026
I interviewed for the global payments team. The phone screen was in mid-February, then HR just ghosted me. I emailed to ask about the result and only got a reply five days later. The virtual onsite ended up landing almost a month late. After the self-introduction in every round there was a small Expedia values behavioral question. Round 1 was coding with the interviewer — a LeetCode question. Aft…
- In-Person Onsite with a PPT Deep DiveCrusoe · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026Offer
Phone screen (Coding) Question: Print a binary tree, using * to represent missing nodes. Leaf nodes need to be separated by one space, and then going up, each parent node should be placed in the middle position between its child nodes. Onsite System Design: Design Slack Coding: Similar to a LeetCode problem (they scrambled the name to dodge the forum filter), except the input is one long string i…
- Inside the Hiring Assessment's Judgment SectionGoogle · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Jan 2026
The assessment has two parts. The first part is the same as what earlier posts already described, so I won't repeat it here. For the second part, since earlier posts only mentioned it briefly, let me say a bit more. This section gives you a scenario and asks you to pick the action you'd be most likely and least likely to take. Here's what I got: You had a good idea about YouTube's design that you…
- Interviewer Late Both Rounds, Then RejectedByteDance · Machine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen · Jan 2026Rejected
I interviewed with ByteDance's Compliance Team (based in Singapore), for an MLE position. Overall the interview experience was pretty bad. Let me start with the process: Round one: the interviewer was 5 minutes late, then spent about 40 minutes asking about my project in a lot of detail. The coding question was Maximum Product Subarray, which I solved right away. Round two: the interviewer was 15…
- L5 Technical Screen, Rejected Over the BQ RoundAmazon · Data Scientist · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Jan 2026Rejected
In 2026 there have been almost no Amazon DS interview write-ups here on 1point3acres — I'm starting to wonder if they're on a hiring freeze. I'm writing one up so people have something to reference. Around mid-March I had applied to 2 AS (Applied Scientist) roles. A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn and scheduled a recruiter call a few days later. On that call they told me AS roles are most…
- Marketing Lead-Scoring Case, Offer in Two WeeksIBM · Data Scientist · Intern · Technical Screen · Jan 2026Offer
After I submitted my application, I automatically got sent an OA — one Python question and one SQL question, not too hard. First round (mainly asked about my resume, a deep dive into the ML project on my resume, and a case): What's your experience building a statistical model and a machine learning model? What kinds of variables/features did you use? Did the client only care about the results, or…
- Merge Intervals, Then Course ScheduleBytedance · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jan 2026
The interviewer was looking over my resume while I gave my self-introduction, and after I finished he asked about a project from my background — a project building a model, and he asked about offline evaluation for the model. Coding: given a set of time-window intervals, merge all overlapping intervals. Input: [[1,3],[2,6],[8,10]], output: [[1,6],[8,10]]. My approach: first sort by each interval'…
- Nailed the Case Study, Still Rejected After Round OneRoblox · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Jan 2026Rejected
(QS 50-100 school, physics PhD, desperately job hunting.) First round, technical interview, 60 minutes. The interviewer asked about my resume for 5 to 10 minutes first (my own work also has some connection to DS). Then two simple pandas data-processing questions using a bit of basic statistical test knowledge. I didn't need to run test cases, I just had to make the interviewer understand my code.…
- Navan Senior Software Engineer interview with a flight aggregation LLD roundNavan · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Online Assessment · Jan 2026Rejected
I went through a compact two-round process for a Senior Software Engineer role, and it ended in a rejection. The first step was an online assessment with two medium-level questions, and I had to use Java. After that, I moved to a low-level design round. The language requirements were strict there too: Java for part of the interview and Java or Golang for another part. The main prompt involved des…
- Northrop Grumman Software Engineer interview, background and clearance questionsNorthrop Grumman · Software Engineer · Jan 2026Offer
I had a single-round interview that felt pretty straightforward. It started with a general question about my background and career path, then moved quickly into a classic "hardest" or "most challenging task" question. I was also asked about any previous clearance and defense-related experience, which anchored the conversation. There weren't any complicated coding challenges or deep discussions of…
- OA, Then Three Back-to-Back Rounds, Offer a Month LaterMicrosoft · Data Scientist · Intern · Onsite · Jan 2026Offer
Timeline 10/13: HackerRank OA — one LeetCode problem and one data-processing problem 11/03: 3 rounds, back-to-back interviews 12/03: offer Background: Statistics PhD, resume roughly 80% LLM-related research, no conference publications at the time of the interview (a few projects were finished and submitted), no industry experience. Round 1: the interviewer was a senior guy. 30 minutes of behavior…
- Onsite Coding Project, Offer the Next DaySalesforce · AI Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026Offer
My background: undergrad from University of Washington, CSE, with about 5 years of YOE. Timeline: Week 1: HR Screening Week 2: Three virtual interview rounds (HM + Project + AI Fundamentals) Week 3: On-site (Coding Project + System Design) One day after the on-site: HR was incredibly efficient and gave me a verbal offer right away. HR Screening Mainly talked about my current interest and my work…
- Onsite Loop in the Ads Org: Topo Sort, System Design, and Two BQsNetflix · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jan 2026Offer
I passed this earlier this year, for the Ads department, which has been pretty popular lately. Since I'm planning to accept the offer, I'm not going to post the specific questions — search for the last three months of posts here and you'll find they're almost all the same type. I'll share some experience and feelings that I hope will be useful. Process-wise: they got back to me 1 day after the ph…
- Onsite Loop With ML System Design, BQ, and an AI-Enabled Coding RoundMeta · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Jan 2026
ML system design: One question was a common one — nearby place recommendation for mobile users who might be on the move. The other one I hadn't seen before — notification ranking. These notifications come from various products, like new product announcements, friends' new updates, and ads served by advertisers, and so on. BQ: Right off the bat they had me talk about my most proud project. Then th…
- Passed a Coding Round I'd Seen Before, Then Walked AwayAtlassian · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jan 2026Withdrew
I was contacted on LinkedIn. At the time I was already interviewing with several other companies at once, but I replied anyway to give it a shot. I passed the phone screen, then scheduled the onsite (VO) with the recruiter. Their onsite can be split across several days — day one is coding. If you fail the coding round, they don't move you on to system design. The first coding round was actually a…
- Passed Onsite and Core Value, Now Waiting on Team MatchAirbnb · Software Engineer · Other · Jan 2026In progress
I got laid off in the middle of last year, unfortunately. After that, looking at my mortgage, I felt empty and pessimistic for a while, then started grinding practice problems hard. At first I used a bunch of small companies to warm up, but I was rusty and kept getting rejected all over the place — I was almost losing my confidence. Then I finally got an interview at Airbnb through a referral. Ai…
- Passed Round 1, Failed Round 2 After Solving Two of Three ProblemsBytedance · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jan 2026Rejected
Round 1 was a coding round with the interviewer, and the experience was great. It was conducted in English, one hour total: the first five minutes were quick self-introductions, then 45 minutes of coding, and the last 10 minutes were for me to ask questions. The problem was a LeetCode question — the exact name was obscured in the original post, but it involved some kind of transformation. I walke…
- Passed the ICC Screen, Then Turned It DownPilot · Software Engineer · New Grad · Technical Screen · Jan 2026Withdrew
The first round went by quickly and I got the contract offer — March 16th, in Python. I heard the batch is about 15 people per batch. Some background on me: Ivy League school, ECE switching into tech, class of 2026, new grad, no internships, GPA 3.8, a few ML school projects. I've been going for SE/SDE/SWE roles and honestly feel like I don't have much in the way of skills or experience. I went t…
- Passed Two Fraud Rounds Despite a Rocky PerformancePayPal · Data Scientist · Onsite · Jan 2026In progress
I applied to a few PayPal positions before Christmas, and two of my applications got recruiter calls. One of them was for a Fraud DS role and moved to interviews fast. The interviewer was someone from the same team based in India, and the interview was at 10:30pm Eastern. They asked about fraud, statistics, SQL, and Python. The second round was with the hiring manager, also based in India, at aro…
- Password Validator and a Three-Table Join Over Bad AudioKarat · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jan 2026
Weird screen, hard to categorize, but I hope this gets seen anyway... Classic low-quality Amazon-customer-service-tier microphone. I've worked with people like this for years and I still only understood about 50% of what the interviewer said. Fortunately they noticed too, so I politely asked them to speak a bit slower, and it got a lot better after that. Right at the start they said I didn't need…
- Phone Screen Plus a Four-Round Onsite, No Feedback After Two WeeksVerkada · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jan 2026No response
Phone screening: HR sent an environment setup prep ahead of time, asking me to set up my GitHub account beforehand and install Docker / PyCharm etc. locally. The interviewer was very patient and walked through the whole flow end to end — I needed to implement three API calls. The actual question matched a report I'd already seen in another thread on the forum. Onsite, live and in person: I drove…
