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.
- 3935
- Experiences
- 857
- Companies
- 532
- Offers
3935 results
- Rejected After a Tough BPS Round With AB Testing, an ML Case, and CodingUber · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025Rejected
I have a master's degree and 1.5 YOE as a DS at a pretty chill, low-pressure company. Even though I got rejected, this was still one of the best interview experiences I've had. HR Screening They asked about my background on my resume, my visa/status situation, and my willingness to relocate. Then they asked why I was interested in the role, what tech stack I use day to day, etc. They also introdu…
- Rejected After a Van Eck Sequence QuestionBloomberg · Software Engineer · New Grad · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
Painful memory from an interview I did last year, around September-October. I was in a funk for a month after it. Bloomberg's bar is basically two medium-to-hard questions, and you're expected to get the optimal solution. It was a virtual interview, and the interviewer showed up 10 minutes late. I sat in the meeting watching her keep logging in and out, and when she finally turned her camera on,…
- Rejected After an Onsite Where the Interviewer Argued Over Big-O NotationMeta · Software Engineer · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
I just got told yesterday that I didn't pass, so I'm reporting back to the forum — and venting a little while I'm at it. Phone: a coding round. OA: a banking-system themed problem. I only passed two rounds, but was told I'd still move on to the onsite. Virtual onsite: System design: the same question as another post I'd already seen on the forum. AI coding: a card game — design a strategy to guar…
- Rejected for 'Not Detailed Enough' After a Full Onsite LoopStripe · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
I was interviewing for a DS role while still employed elsewhere. The overall process was decent, and after the interviews I felt pretty good about how it went, but in the end I still got a fail. Two rounds said my answers weren't detailed enough. Personally I think I was already quite detailed, and there wasn't a single question I couldn't answer or got wrong. Has anyone gotten similar feedback b…
- Rejected Right Before the System Design RoundLeague · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Oct 2025Rejected
League is a leading HealthTech company headquartered in Toronto. A friend referred me, and I quickly got a screen scheduled with HR. After that came a take-home assessment, no language restriction (they use Go internally). It wasn't a LeetCode-style algorithm question — instead you had to build a server, including various APIs, implementing some operations on a matrix (reverse, add, etc.). The as…
- Rejected Same Day Despite a Smooth BFS SolutionDatabricks · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Oct 2025Rejected
The interviewer was a Senior engineer, and he was 5 minutes late. He started off explaining what his team does — since this was a direct match on background with an infra team, I spent about 3-5 minutes introducing what I used to do on my previous team, and he asked me one question about it. After this intro segment, there was about 45 minutes left. The actual interview started. It was a known qu…
- Rocket Lab Software Engineer interview: large take-home projectRocket Lab · Software Engineer · Take-home Project · Oct 2025
My process was fairly condensed and involved only a few steps. I had a screening call, followed by a take-home project and a technical interview with the team to discuss what I had submitted. The take-home wasn't a nightmare, but it was on the larger side for an interview assignment. The technical discussion focused on clarifying the work and talking through what I had built. There wasn't much ra…
- Same Question Rewritten Three Times in One Phone ScreenOracle · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
Documenting a bad phone interview experience. I don't know if this is typical for OCI, but here's my advice: if you can tell early on you're going to have a hard time communicating with the interviewer, just reschedule. The interviewer was some old guy, and his accent was incredibly, incredibly heavy. That said, there's nothing to be done about that in general — my own team has several people wit…
- Sample-Size Math in the Experimentation RoundRobinhood · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
I've been getting rejected a lot in interviews lately. Today I got another rejection — they said my performance in the experimentation round wasn't good. I felt like I did really well in that round; I covered all the concepts I'd prepared ahead of time. I honestly don't see what was bad about it. For the experimentation round, they asked about the benefits of launching fractional shares and how t…
- Second-Round Onsite, One Interviewer Cancels via Late-Night EmailGoogle · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025In progress
About a month or two ago I did my first round, which had two sessions, but I honestly don't remember what was covered. I guess I didn't do well, because there was no follow-up. Last week I suddenly heard that I'd be moving on to a second round. The second round was supposed to have three sessions, but the interviewer for one of them wasn't available and canceled on me by email in the middle of th…
- Seven Rounds Including a Take-Home Prediction TaskDoorDash · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025
The interview process was as follows: Round 1: HackerRank assessment — SQL plus some data analysis questions. Round 2: HR screen — talked about why I was interested in DoorDash, my project experience, and why I was looking to switch jobs. Round 3: Hiring manager interview — mostly about my project experience, plus a DoorDash case question. Round 4: Take-home — given a DoorDash dataset to build a…
- Six VO Rounds, None Matched the Forum's Question BankMeta · Data Science Manager · Onsite · Oct 2025
Since I looked at basically all the interview reports for the IC track, most of the time people are just going back and forth between the same cases from the past two years: AR, 4 cases: Restaurant recommendation IG shopping FB group/circle FB vs. IG AE, 4 cases: Fake accounts Fake news Comment distribution Ads inserted into the feed I've already summarized it like this, so go search the specific…
- SQL and a Business Case in One Technical ScreenChime · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
This round is split into two parts: one hour of SQL and one hour of a case study. SQL: They give you a transaction table and a user table. If you're fast you'll probably get through 5-6 questions. The time field is a timestamp, so you need to use date_trunc to handle it. The first few questions are pretty basic and you can knock them out with a few CTEs. It involves several window functions like…
- SQL and A/B Testing Screen, No OfferMeta · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025Rejected
There were 2 SQL questions — one to calculate a total and one to calculate a percentage. Neither question was hard, but given how demanding Meta interviews are, you need to think through a lot of edge cases, or you might be done for. The case study covered A/B testing and stats estimation. Also not hard, but you had to grasp the key points accurately and quickly. For A/B testing they wanted to te…
- SQL and Product Sense in a 45-Minute ScreenMeta · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
Giving back to the forum. I scheduled this interview in late March for early April. The interviewer was very nice and patiently gave me hints — maybe a few too many hints, so I'm not sure how it'll turn out. I didn't hear anything within 24 hours, so I'm probably out, but I don't think I could have done any better. While it's still fresh in my memory, let me share it with everyone. Round 1: Techn…
- SQL ETL Case Study Under Time PressureStripe · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
The team was already pretty familiar with my background, so the interview wasn't set up to be too difficult. Tech part: They gave me a case and had me build an ETL process based on it. (If the interviewer asks whether it would still run under different scenarios, you'd better think it over again — there's a good chance you missed something.) It was a Zoom video interview, and I wrote SQL code on…
- SQL Screen on the Classic Streaming and Viewing TablesTwitch · Data Scientist · Intern · Technical Screen · Oct 2025In progress
I did a mass application to Twitch's Graduate DS intern program. About two weeks later I got an HR phone screen — they asked why this company and three or four traditional behavioral questions, about 30 minutes total. A week after that came the technical round: 4-5 SQL questions, all built around two tables related to streaming and viewing. The questions were slightly different from ones already…
- SQL Screen Then a Four-Round Onsite Full of Case StudiesUpstart · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025
Three SQL questions, no need to actually run the query. There's a marketing table (by marketing_touch), and another one is a conversion table. The first question is to calculate avg count by month. The second is to find the last touch before conversion, by company (or by month, I don't quite remember). The third is: conversion and last touch both happened in some particular month, and how many co…
- SQL Screen With Doubled Difficulty and Tight TimeDoorDash · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
Part 1 was product, and since I was well prepared it felt fine. Prepare a lot more for high-frequency Biker and Cold Food. Read the attached switchback experiment design, randomization, and analysis parts carefully. SQL was not the usual four questions (someone on the forum summarized them before, but the answers weren't quite right, so correct them yourself). I got new questions, and the difficu…
- SQL Then a Teen-Safety Product QuestionMeta · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
In early May I got an interview invitation from HR, so I scheduled the phone screen for late May. After the interview started, we chatted for about 10 minutes, talking about why I wanted to join Facebook. Then the DS interviewing me asked whether I wanted to start with SQL or a product question. I picked SQL first, and we jumped straight into it: Table: Date, Timestamp, sender_id, receiver_id Thi…
- SQL, Analytics Case Studies, and Two Straight Rounds of Behavioral QuestionsAmazon · Business Intelligence Engineer · Onsite · Oct 2025
Amazon BIE final round interview summary Round 1: Visualization: Introduce the dashboard you built, explain which visualizations you used, and explain why you chose them. Analytical: Suppose you're the manager of a delivery station. In the past you manually assigned packages to delivery drivers, and now you need to build a model that automatically assigns package quantities. What data and methods…
- SQL, Behavioral, and Analytics Execution RoundsMeta · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025
The behavioral round was also some classic questions. For this round I also prepared one example for each question mentioned on the forum — when I got something similar in the actual interview I just tweaked the answer slightly. For the result, it helps to state it clearly, so the interviewer understands exactly how your action solved the problem well and got a good outcome. The questions I got w…
- Surprised by the Low L4 Base Pay, Then a Four-Round OnsiteLyft · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025
The HR video interview covered salary expectations (the L4 base salary was really low — I was shocked). After passing that round, I had a tech phone screen (pretty similar to what people share online — probability calculations, an open-ended supply-and-demand question). After that round they went straight to scheduling a 4-round onsite. HR was really nice and gave me a rough idea of what each rou…
- Take-Home Challenge, Then a Four-Round PowerDay and an Offer in Under 50 MinutesCapital One · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Offer
Yesterday morning was PowerDay, 9:00am-12:30pm Eastern Time. I'm in Vancouver, so I dragged myself out of bed at 5:20am for the interview. Luckily it went well — less than 50 minutes after the interview ended I got an email from the recruiter with an offer writeup, and now the next step is team matching. I've been sending out résumés for a year and a half and honestly it made me want to die, cons…
- Technical Screen With ML Basics and Leadership Principles QuestionsAmazon · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
Behavioral questions The questions the interviewer asked were fairly simple, roughly like this: Give me a story where you have limited time to finish a project Give me a story where you actively learn a new skill (Learn and Be Curious) Give me a story (where you showcase "Bias for Action") Give me a story (where you showcase "Ownership") I felt like while interviewing me, the interviewer might ha…
- The Energy One Mini Case and a Same-Day Power Day CallbackCapital One · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025In progress
Mini case, midday on 3/18/2025. The question was one someone had already shared here before — the Energy One case. The interviewer gave a short self-introduction, then asked about my background — worth remembering to prep for that too, I was so focused on the mini case that I answered it pretty roughly. Then we got into the actual case. There's an energy company called Energy One that wants to tr…
- the Groupon Coupon Mini-CaseCapital One · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025In progress
Just finished the mini case this morning, and by the afternoon I already had the pass notification along with a scheduled power day for next week — I have to say the recruiter I got this time was way better than the last one. While it's still fresh, let me report back to everyone. Hoping next week's power day goes smoothly. At the start, the interviewer briefly introduced his background, had me i…
- the Ride-Share Profitability Mini CaseCapital One · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
I just finished my mini case this morning, sharing it while I still remember everything. I've gotten a lot of help here, so I wanted to give back too. Hope everyone's interviews go well. Today's interview was the exact question someone here had already shared — the original Google Doc question — and of course that was the one question I hadn't gotten around to preparing. Felt like I'd practiced p…
- Three Back-to-Back Technical Rounds on Options Pricing and AlgorithmsMorgan Stanley · Quant (Strats) · Technical Screen · Oct 2025In progress
Morgan Stanley Quant (Strats). There are 2-3 rounds total, and I just finished round two. I'm not sure if round three will be a superday or just a chat with the MD. Round one was a straightforward LeetCode-style question, the same for everyone regardless of team — 30 minutes of live coding. Not hard, it tested a greedy algorithm, and once you saw it was greedy it clicked instantly. Round two was…
- Three Case Rounds, a Scheduling Mishap, and a RejectionCapital One · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
Round 1 had two interviewers — one leading, one silent the whole time. The BQ was a standard "help others" question. They followed up with a lot of detail, including what materials or records existed for the help I gave, and what I had to sacrifice or give up something important to help someone. A handful of other detail questions too. Then came the first case. It started by bringing up the reven…
