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
- Three of Four Onsite Rounds Done, Technical Session Pushed Two WeeksMeta · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025In progress
I finished 3 out of 4 rounds of my VO (virtual onsite) yesterday, and while it's still fresh in my memory I wanted to share the experience. The reason I only got through 3/4 is that right after my third round, the recruiter told me the final Technical session would need to be rescheduled — it ended up getting pushed two weeks out, which feels like such slow torture (I originally wanted to knock o…
- Three Rounds Done, Final Technical Session Pushed Two Weeks OutMeta · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025In progress
I finished 3 out of 4 rounds of my virtual onsite yesterday, so while it's still fresh in my memory, let me share my experience. The reason I only finished 3/4 is that after the third round, I found out the recruiter said the final Technical session needs to be rescheduled — it ended up getting pushed two weeks out. Such a slow death (I originally wanted to knock out the whole day in one go, spec…
- Three Rounds, Rejected for No Headcount After Three MonthsLyft · Software Engineer · Intern · Onsite · Oct 2025Rejected
The OA had two parts. The first was responding to a PM's comments inside a doc, and the second was coding — more like they hand you a stripped-down existing project and have you edit the code according to review comments, not your typical LeetCode problem. VO1: one hour of coding, something like LRU. I basically finished within 30 minutes. The interviewer was really nice, and there weren't many f…
- TurboTax Take-Home, Growth Team Onsite, and a Slow Recruiter ProcessIntuit · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025
First there was a TurboTax home assignment, then a 45-minute presentation plus Q&A. In this part they ask about the recommendations you make based on the data, whether your assumptions are reasonable, and what other data you could look at. I remember there being a question like that, and I didn't have a good answer at the time. The task was predicting whether tax filing succeeds or not, and there…
- Twitch Backend Engineer interview with AWS system design promptsTwitch · Backend Engineer · Online Assessment · Oct 2025
I interviewed at Twitch for a Software Engineer role. The process felt challenging and deliberate over roughly a few weeks, with a testing approach that was more distinctive and less focused on standard LeetCode problems. It started with a timed coding assignment. After that, I had a recruiter phone call, followed by a hiring manager discussion as the second phase. The technical testing used ques…
- Two Attempts, a Cancelled Headcount, and an Energy Case InterviewCapital One · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025In progress
My Capital One interview process has been quite a rollercoaster so far — over the past month or so I've interviewed twice. Timeline The first time was through a referral from a friend, for a newly posted analytics role: 1/16: HR Call scheduled 1/24: HR Call rescheduled to 1/31 — the reason was that when the original interview time came, I sat on my phone waiting for over half an hour, then HR fin…
- Two Case-Study Rounds, No Coding, Rejected After 3 DaysGoogle · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025Rejected
Round 1: Measurement & Modeling Concepts A case study: Google Meet has a big customer who complains that meetings keep dropping/disconnecting. They ask how you'd analyze and solve this problem, how you'd put together an analysis plan, and how you'd estimate the impact. If it's affecting retention, how do you build a model to predict retention (contract renewal)? How do you evaluate models, what a…
- Two Case+BQ Rounds, No Coding This YearAmazon · Economist Intern · Intern · Technical Screen · Oct 2025In progress
During this application season I also interviewed for the Amazon economist summer intern role, so I'm writing up my experience here to share with anyone who needs it. Timeline: Mid-January 2025: had a senior refer me 03/04/2025: HR reached out 03/26/2025: first round 03/28/2025: got the email that I passed the first round 04/16/2025: second round 04/16/2025: two hours later that same day, heard I…
- Two Interviews Years Apart, Same Clash With the InterviewerUpstart · Data Scientist · Senior+ · Onsite · Oct 2025
I applied to this company years ago, right after graduation, and it felt like neither I nor the phone-screen interviewer were really into each other. Fast forward many years, and this time the HR screen and phone screen actually went well at first — but the virtual onsite took me right back to those days. I ran into another interviewer where, again, neither of us was really into the other. That s…
- Two Phone Screens, a Six-Round Virtual Onsite, and an OfferNVIDIA · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Offer
I want to talk about the mindset and the whole prep process for this interview. If you're not interested, feel free to skip straight to the write-up below. The most important thing: be humble and ask others for help (don't be shy about it — if you want to learn from people, you have to spend time building relationships. It's not about getting someone to hand you all the answers, it's about genuin…
- Two Screens, a Six-Round Virtual Onsite, and an Unofficial Offer the Same DayNVIDIA · Data Scientist · Onsite · Oct 2025Offer
My girlfriend has a friend who works at NVIDIA, and they referred me. About two weeks later I got my first round video interview. I want to talk about the mindset and the prep process for the whole interview loop — if that doesn't interest you, feel free to skip straight to the interview notes below. The most important thing: humble yourself and ask others for help (don't be shy about it — if you…
- Two Tech Screens, Screwed Over by My Own Round 2 InterviewerUber · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Oct 2025
Two rounds of tech screens at Uber — tl;dr, I got screwed over by one of my own. Sharing this for those who come after. Round 1: coding and case study. The coding part was simple Python scripts, nothing like an LC medium, I blew through it in 15 minutes. The case study asked about the various downstream effects of a change in rider ETA, and how I'd design an experiment for it — we went from suppl…
- VO Split Into VO1/VO2, Karat AI-Coding RoundInstacart · Software Engineer · Onsite · Oct 2025
I got hit with Instacart's VO reform. The onsite is now split into two parts, VO1 and VO2 — if you fail VO1, there's no VO2, that's just it. VO1 has three rounds: First, the Karat round, which is AI coding. I hadn't used AI tools in a while so I wasn't used to it, and I only got through the fourth question before time ran out. The questions were: Given a codebase on a bus route simulation: How do…
- A 45-Minute Screen and a Transactional Key-Value Store QuestionApplied Intuition · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
HR reached out to me on LinkedIn, and we scheduled the first phone call. HR gave a quick overview of the company and emphasized how intense the work culture is there. HR made it clear that the next round would normally be a one-hour interview, but explained that because the company valued efficiency and speed, they were only giving me 45 minutes. Then we scheduled the first technical phone screen…
- a Candy-Crush Matrix and a Fruit-Pair Sliding Window on the OAUber · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025
Questions 1 and 2 were easy, two array questions. Question 3 was kind of like a match-three game — a matrix where different numbers represent different colors. If a cell has two neighbors (up, down, left, or right) that are the same color as it, they explode and get cleared. After the whole matrix finishes clearing, the cells that weren't cleared fall down. Empty cells are represented by 0. Retur…
- A Confusing Building-Capacity Coding Problem Plus SQL on the Library SchemaMeta · Data Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
Python Questions 1 and 2 are basically the same as the ones posted yesterday. For question 1, I got a follow-up: how do you write it without heapq. For question 2, the log list's true/false values need to alternate, and you also have to consider that a book needs to be checked out before it can be returned — otherwise that's wrong too. Question 3 is a new one I'd never seen before and it's a bit…
- A File System Question and a Hard-to-Follow InterviewerHarvey · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
The file system question from 1point3acres. The writeup is here: a question that hasn't shown up on the forum before, basically a file system where you implement two functions: addFile(String path) — given a string like "path/to/somewhere/file.txt", store this file getFile(String path) — input "path/to/somewhere" returns file.text, input "path/to" returns the "somewhere" folder There wasn't reall…
- A Four-Part In-Memory Database OA on CodeSignalMeta · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025
Just finished it, seems like a new OA, I haven't seen this one on the forum before. The first two parts were pretty easy. The third was a bit annoying but manageable. The fourth needed some time. It was on CodeSignal. Implement an in-memory database. This database is basically a double hashmap, something like: The key is user1, user2, the field is age, height, and the value is 12, 180. Step 1: St…
- A Month of No-Shows Before a Tight Three-Part Python ScreenStripe · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025In progress
Timeline: Early July, first round was an HR phone call — the interviewer showed up a few minutes late. Mostly asked about location, discussed salary and compensation, my previous work experience, why I chose Stripe. (Though she did mention Stripe supports fully remote, which was a nice touch.) After that we agreed to schedule the technical phone screen, but then they sent the wrong email template…
- A Month of Scheduling Delays, Then a Tight Three-Part Coding ScreenStripe · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025In progress
Timeline: Early July: first HR phone call, interviewer was a few minutes late. Mainly asked about location, discussed compensation, my past work experience, why I chose Stripe. (But they mentioned Stripe supports fully remote, which is pretty nice) After that, they agreed to schedule a technical phone screen, but then sent the wrong email template again — it took me a week and two reminders to ge…
- A Quota System Design That Ran Out of TimeSnowflake · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025Rejected
Interview process Both sides introduced ourselves. The interviewer asked about one of my projects — I don't quite remember what exactly they asked. Then system design. Then I asked the interviewer some questions. System design Question: design a Quota System that's shared by multiple upstream services. For example, Google Drive and Google Photos share 100GB of space, and each user has one global…
- A Rate-Limited Dependency Version Search ProblemOpenAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
First question: the topic was dependency version check. Part 1: they give you a list of dependency versions, for example [103.003.02, 103.003.03, 203.003.02]. Each version may or may not support the current feature, and you need to find the earliest version that supports it. Part 2: they gave a bunch of corner test cases, and some of the cases actually expose more requirements — your earlier assu…
- A Surprise Extra Round, Then a Downlevel to SeniorAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Sep 2025Offer
Overall the problems weren't hard, but there was a lot of code to write. The phone screen was one round of coding — they asked the file deduplication problem (Q2), done on Replit. The onsite (VO) had 5 rounds total — it was originally supposed to be 4, but they added one more afterward: Round 1, Coding: asked the web crawler question (Q1). The interviewer asked if I'd seen a similar problem befor…
- A System Design Interviewer Who Wouldn't Engage or ListenFigma · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
First off, my overall interview experience with Figma was really good — the HR/recruiter was responsive and helpful throughout the whole process, and after the onsite they gave me detailed feedback. Every interviewer I got, except for the one I'm about to go into detail about, was pretty nice. This interviewer had me for the system design round, and the question was the classic "trending articles…
- A Technical Screen Packed with Stats QuestionsLinkedIn · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
No guarantee the answers here are correct, just for reference! LinkedIn Stats One bank has 5 tellers and a single line, another bank has 5 tellers with 5 separate lines — which one would you queue at? Simple statistical explanation: the "Long Plank Effect" (the opposite of the Weakest Link Effect). In a single queue, your waiting time is determined by the fastest available teller. In multiple que…
- A Three-Part Payment/Invoice Matching ProblemStripe · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
Payment and invoice, split into three parts. Invoice is always a list, something like ["invoice-id-1, 100, 2022-01-01", "invoice-id-2, 300, 2022-01-01"]. Payment is just one, something like 'payment-id, 300, paying for: invoice-id-1'. In part one, the payment includes an invoice id, and you're asked to output: "payment-id paid XXX amount for invoice XXX on date XXX" In part two, the payment no lo…
- A Trie Backtracking Bug I Never FixedSnowflake · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
First round: the interviewer — I really feel bad, she kept trying to help me the whole time, but in the end I still didn't get the bug fixed within the hour. The input is a string array: [California, California/San Francisco, California/San Francisco/7th Street], etc. The other input is an array of the nodes to delete, e.g. [California/San Francisco], and the return should be [California]. LeetCo…
- A Two-Day Virtual Onsite After the DashMart Phone ScreenDoorDash · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
Vendor recruiter call After the referral, I got an email scheduling the vendor recruiter call and the phone screen separately. This round was just going over my resume and checking whether there was overlap with the target team. The whole thing was 10+ minutes, and the questions felt pretty targeted. Phone screen A senior manager, and I got the DashMart problem. I hadn't looked at any write-ups b…
- A Web Crawler Question That Turned Into a Late Multithreading PushAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025Rejected
Phone screen, and there's a problem on LeetCode that's almost identical to what they asked. Write a web crawler that only scrapes pages under the same hostname. The URL they gave me was for a real website (I think it might have been their CEO's blog?). The interview format was a bit different though — he didn't have me jump straight to writing multi-threaded code. You do it single-threaded first,…
- A Whiteboard OOD Round Where Even Checking the Docs Had to Be "Documented"Airbnb · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
I interviewed with a specific team at Airbnb, and the experience was pretty bad. First I had a round with the hiring manager, which went well — we had a great conversation. The manager said the next round would be a phone screen: 30 minutes of resume deep dive and 30 minutes of coding. Before the phone screen, I spent time preparing some project talking points and BQ (behavioral questions). Phone…
