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
- Rejected at the ML System Design RoundGoogle · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Dec 2025Rejected
Sharing my rejection story — I just failed my Google Machine Learning Engineer interview at the last stage, so I'm writing it down while it's fresh, for anyone coming after me to avoid the same pitfalls. Process 5 rounds total: Phone screen (coding) Onsite coding, two rounds ML system design, one round Behavior/leadership, one round Process Review Phone Screen A LeetCode medium, a variant combini…
- Rejected Over a Bridge-Crossing BrainteaserExoduspoint · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Dec 2025Rejected
I felt pretty good about the first round, but I still got rejected. Thinking back on it, I think it's because I didn't give the optimal solution to a brainteaser. Investment companies like this one seem to care a lot about that. So I'm posting this for anyone who interviews here after me. The first round was with a department head. The interview was made up of a lot of small questions — a few sho…
- Remitly Software Engineer interview with a six-week scheduling delayRemitly · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Dec 2025
Recruiter coordination set the tone for me. It took more than six weeks to make initial contact, and the interview timeline kept getting canceled, rescheduled, and then disappearing again. Even after I completed a recruiter screen, the next steps didn't move smoothly. I had to chase updates, and eventually the process went quiet. There wasn't much clarity about what happened after the early techn…
- Rokt Software Engineer interview with onsite coding, design, and leadership roundsRokt · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Dec 2025
My process started with online aptitude and personality testing, followed by a behavioral evaluation and a one-way video interview where I recorded answers to a prompt. After those early steps, I was invited to an in-person onsite sequence with multiple parts. In the later rounds, the technical work shifted toward live problem solving and deeper evaluation. I worked through standard algorithmic c…
- Rotting Oranges Plus a Meeting-Bot System DesignOtter.Ai · Software Engineer · Onsite · Dec 2025
Coding round: Rotting Oranges System design Design a system: the user enters a video meeting link on a web page, the system assigns a bot from a Bot Pool, has the bot join the meeting, and continuously reports the bot's status back to the user. The meeting platform could be Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, etc. Existing components Both ends of the system already exist: Web UI user enter…
- Same Questions Recycled Between RoundsUpstart · Data Scientist · Intern · Onsite · Dec 2025Offer
Overall, the experience was pretty good. The HR person and the few interviewers I dealt with were all really supportive — nobody looked down on international candidates. There was no HR screen — I went straight into the first-round tech interview. The interviewer didn't even ask about my resume; we did a quick self-introduction and then went straight into the questions. The questions were: An ato…
- Simplified Grep, Friend-Request Math, and a BQ RoundBloomberg · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Dec 2025
Round 1: implement a simplified version of grep — find lines in a file containing a specific string, and also account for extensibility to flags. I just honestly clarified requirements first, then wrote the parsing plus the string matching. The focus of this problem isn't really the algorithm, it's whether you can write clean, extensible code. Round 2: given an array of ages, compute the total nu…
- Six-Question OA With Rotating QuestionsSquarepoint · Data Scientist · Online Assessment · Dec 2025
Squarepoint's OA has 6 questions total. The first four are probability, statistics, and reading a piece of code to analyze its time complexity. The fourth question gives a scenario and asks which kind of bias in statistics the scenario describes. None of these are hard — you can finish them in 5-10 minutes or even faster. The last two questions are coding. The first one is easy: a store has n dif…
- SQL and Product Sense on a Group Call FeatureMeta · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Dec 2025
The interviewer was a very energetic and friendly woman, and everything she asked me was about group calls. The premise: Messenger has groups, but no group call feature. The first SQL question was pretty common, but the second one I'd never seen before. What percentage of today's active "gb" users had more than 50 call records in the previous 7 days (counting both calls made and calls received)?…
- Stackadapt Account Executive interview with shifting final roundsStackadapt · Account Executive · HR Screen · Dec 2025Rejected
My experience with the recruiter and recruiting manager was frustrating from the start because the logistics never felt stable. I was repeatedly told I'd be meeting one person, only for the meeting to change at the last minute. It became hard to keep track of who the actual hiring manager was, especially after I went through multiple rounds with people who all had the same title. I also received…
- Stackadapt Account Executive interview: 10-day project and presentationStackadapt · Account Executive · HR Screen · Dec 2025Offer
The process felt more rigorous than I expected from the outside. After a recruiter screen, I interviewed with a Director about a week later. The conversation focused heavily on scenarios, and I also got deeper industry knowledge questions than I was ready for. The pacing and format changed as the rounds went on. Next was a project and presentation round with a Director and a Manager. I had 10 day…
- System Design Round Ended Early, Rejected in 9 MinutesRobinhood · Software Engineer · Onsite · Dec 2025Rejected
A bit of background: I graduated in 2021 and did four years of C++ SDK dev, mixed in with about two years of building a Python test framework. My company started requiring three days a week back onsite, and the commute was wearing me out, so I started looking for something closer to home. Robinhood's infra work wasn't really a match for my background, but they gave me an interview anyway, and in…
- Three Coding Rounds, One BQ, and an OfferMeta · Software Engineer · New Grad · Onsite · Dec 2025Offer
I am sharing my experience interviewing for Meta's 2025 new graduate role last year. Interview experience The interviews did not feel easy. Other people's Meta loops seemed to get two medium tagged problems and generous grading, but every one of my rounds felt difficult. The first round tested a disconnected graph. In the second round, I had 35 minutes to explain and write one hard and two medium…
- Three Phone Rounds, All Game TheoryJane Street · Quantitative Trading · Intern · Technical Screen · Dec 2025
I'll share my experience with the three phone-interview rounds for a quant trading internship at Jane Street's NYC office. Jane Street likes to test with games — no math brainteasers, no algorithms, none of that standard stuff. You don't need to answer fast either; taking a minute or two to think or calculate before giving an answer is completely fine. Round 1: two questions, both original questi…
- Three VO Rounds (Reel, Car Rental, Carpool) End in an Add-On InterviewMeta · Data Engineer · Onsite · Dec 2025In progress
I prepared for the VO for a long time, and I still ended up getting an add-on interview — I can accept that outcome. I'm hoping someone kind who's been through an add-on interview can share the question bank!! Will they pull from question types that come up a lot but I wasn't asked, or will they pull from really old questions? I've read a lot of other add-on interview posts and haven't gotten any…
- Three VO Rounds from a Brainteaser to Black-Scholes RobustnessMorgan Stanley · Quantitative Researcher · Onsite · Dec 2025
Virtual Onsite interview experience The VO had 3 rounds total, each about 30 minutes. Round 1 Mainly resume questions + probability questions + a brainteaser. The interviewer first asked some project-related questions based on my resume, then asked some probability questions. At the end there was a brainteaser: there's a dog running on a circle of radius 1, at speed 4. You're at some point inside…
- Two Back-to-Back Rounds, BQ Then DPGoogle · Software Engineer · New Grad · Onsite · Dec 2025
This year's Early Career interview process has two rounds, and each round includes two interviews, usually scheduled back to back on the same day. If you do well in the first round, you get invited to the second round. Round 1 This includes a BQ (behavioral) interview and a Tech interview. The BQ interviewer clearly had a list of questions and just went down it in order — I'd answer one and they'…
- Two Brutal Phone Rounds on SQL, Python, and Airport Causal InferencePayPal · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Dec 2025
Overall impression: it was really hard. First there was a 15-minute recruiter call. They asked briefly about my current job, why I was looking, and my visa/status situation, then said they'd send an email with the interview process. The phone interviews were two rounds total, each 1 hour. Round 1: coding (including SQL and Python), plus a case study. The SQL question was built around drivers and…
- Two Coding Rounds, No System DesignVerkada · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Dec 2025
Looking at other people's interview reports, most say they got one coding question and one system design question, but I got two coding questions — not sure if that's just because I was too slow and never got to the system design part... The first question: there's a camera that processes camera data. The input is a vector and a threshold. Each element in the vector is a timestamp and a motion le…
- Two OA Questions on Container Waste and Org-Chart PropagationIMC · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Dec 2025
Two questions: Question 1: Waste Reduction A pharmaceutical company business scenario. The company prepares liquid medication for different patients, and the amount each patient needs varies. The medication has to be packaged into containers, and each "container set" offers bottles of different capacities. Given: the requirement amounts for multiple patients (requirements); and several container…
- Two Tech Screens, No Feedback on the RejectApple · Machine Learning Engineer · New Grad · Technical Screen · Dec 2025Rejected
One day out of nowhere I got an email from an Apple recruiter about an open position. Since the opportunity was there, I figured I'd interview and see how it went. First round was directly with the hiring manager — we started by chatting through my resume. The team does RAG work, and it's basically an internal group that supports the hardware team as helpers. In the last 20 minutes, they opened u…
- Two Technical Rounds, Rejected Despite Glowing FeedbackApple · Analytics Engineer · Technical Screen · Dec 2025Rejected
Apple Maps - Metrics Engineering team I'd honestly never heard of this role before. I looked up a lot of information about it, and it feels kind of like a Data Engineer role with an Analytics focus — designing data pipelines for various Apple Maps features, and designing metrics to measure the app's performance. A recruiter reached out to me, and I went into the interview with a "why not, let's s…
- Two-Hour Online Assessment with Two ProblemsGoldman Sachs · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Dec 2025
2 hours to solve two problems: Transaction Segments Given an array transactionValues of length n, where transactionValues[i] is the transaction amount at time i. Count the number of contiguous subarrays that are strictly increasing and have length exactly k. Strictly increasing means: transactionValues[i]
- Two-Month Wait, Then Advanced to Technical the Same NightCloudflare · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Dec 2025In progress
I applied in mid-September. I got an HR outreach in late November, and this week (early December) I had my interview — the first round was with the hiring manager. They mainly asked experience-related questions: Why Cloudflare Do you have any experience using Cloudflare products? Introduce a recent project Technical details of the project Have you ever contributed to any production code? Have you…
- Whatnot Software Engineer interview: Karat timing and communication challengesWhatnot · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Dec 2025
My first meaningful technical round was a Karat interview that began with a discussion of my project. After that, I had two coding questions to solve. I struggled with the second one and couldn’t get all the test cases to pass, so the session ended with me chasing correctness. In another attempt, the Karat interview went poorly for a different reason. The interviewer explained the problem badly a…
- A Behavioral Screen on Team Leadership, Answered via ScrumGoogle · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Nov 2025
Was it last month or the month before? The interviewer was young. The main questions were: Talk about one of your projects Some hypothetical questions around team playing and leadership — for example, if you were the team lead, how would you handle someone on the team blowing past a deadline, or how would you assign roles when the team runs into a new problem that nobody on the team is familiar w…
- A Brutal OA With Robot-Building and Factory GamesRoblox · Data Scientist · Online Assessment · Nov 2025
First-time poster here. After I got the OA, I asked the career center for an extension but didn't get one, so I ended up squeezing it into one evening of Thanksgiving break, a week before finals deadlines. After I finished I felt like my English was terrible and my IQ had dropped :((( It seriously wrecked my mood for the rest of finals prep. 25 minutes building a robot car. There were two rounds…
- A Four-Level Frontend OA Building a Blog AppTripadvisor · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Nov 2025In progress
A couple of days after the referral I got an AI HR call — 15 minutes answering some behavioral questions — and then I received two separate OA links. OA1 was a 15-minute, 50-question IQ-style test plus a company culture questionnaire. I didn't do that well on it — I only got through 45 of the 50 questions, and I'd estimate my accuracy was somewhere around 35-40%. OA2 was a frontend CodeSignal OA:…
- A Four-Part OA With Two In-Platform GamesRoblox · Data Scientist · Intern · Online Assessment · Nov 2025
Roblox's DS summer intern OA has 4 parts: the first two parts are both playing games on Roblox's own platform, the third part is basically behavioral multiple choice, and the fourth part is coding. Part 1: a build-a-car game, 25 minutes total; 2 sections, 13 minutes each, and each section has two different terrains. You need to install different parts on a car to get through both terrains, and th…
- A Marathon of 17 Probability OA QuestionsOptiver · Data Scientist · Online Assessment · Nov 2025
Pick a random integer from 1 to 10,000. What's the probability that every digit of that number is different? Roll a die until you roll something greater than 4. What's the expected value of the sum of all the rolls? Draw 3 cards from a standard 52-card deck. What's the expected value of the product of the three numbers (J = 11, Q = 12, K = 13)? Toss 100 coins. Pair up an H with a T and remove tha…
