Katkat

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

  • A Whiteboard OOD Screen With a Difficult InterviewerAirbnb · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Sep 2025

    I did a team-match interview with a team at Airbnb, and the experience was pretty bad. First I had a round with the manager, and that went really well — we talked and it was a pleasant conversation. Then the manager said the next round would be a phone screen: 30 minutes for a resume deep dive and 30 minutes for coding. Before the phone screen I spent time prepping some project talking points and…

  • An Algorithm Question That Turned Into System DesignPalo Alto Networks · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    Interview Process Introduced ourselves to each other Asked about resume details (the interviewer was pretty funny — he saw on my resume that I mentioned how much revenue my project had contributed, and he actually asked whether the company had actually paid me that money) Algorithm question / system design Questions for the interviewer Algorithm Question / System Design This part was interesting.…

  • An OA With a Hand-Coded Tetris Fill ProblemUber · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025

    I honestly don't remember the first two questions anymore, but they were both very easy, and it was explicitly stated that you didn't need to worry about complexity — brute force was totally fine. Even a rusty old-timer like me, who hasn't been grinding LeetCode for years, only spent 8 minutes total on those two combined. The third question was something I'd never seen before. It's similar to Tet…

  • an OA with almost no test cases givenHudson River Trading · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025

    Just finished the SWE OA, same setup as the reports people have posted in past years. Overall it wasn't that hard — compared to some other trading companies it wasn't especially hard, but the OA email did say you need to write your own test cases, and that turned out to be true. They give very, very few test cases, and there are a lot of edge cases you have to figure out and test yourself. On one…

  • Architecture Walkthrough Then Build on Top of ItPalo Alto Networks · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    Interview process Introduced ourselves to each other Asked about resume details A simple algorithm warm-up question System design based on the team's existing architecture Q&A for the interviewer Algorithm question: 226. Invert Binary Tree Wrote it on the whiteboard and did a dry run. System design This team is similar to an ML Infra team — the ML team provides a bunch of models, wraps them into…

  • BairesDev Software Engineer interview: exam submission error and unfinished tasksBairesDev · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025

    My process started promisingly, but I didn't finish everything. I ran into technical problems during the exams, and when I tried to submit what I had completed, the system marked it as an error in the console. I also lost time because of distractions and couldn't complete the remaining activities. Because I couldn't get past the submission issue or finish the full set of tasks, I didn't reach the…

  • Bank System OA, Ran Out of Time on Level 3Meta · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025

    This is the old bank system question from the forum. Let me add some details. Level 2 needs to output a string with the account information: {accountId}{amount spent}. For level 3, all transfers and pending transfers are best kept in a map rather than a list, to save time. Level 1: just creating an account, and adding/deducting balance. Level 2: track the n users who transferred out the most mone…

  • Binary Search on Error Logs, Then a Graph BFS/DFS Follow-upSnowflake · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025

    A classic problem in application-question form. Binary Search The input is a log history. There are three kinds of logs: Info, Warn, and Error, and each log starts with its own type — for example, an Info-type log looks like "[Info] ...". The log history follows two patterns: Once an Error shows up, the service is down, and every log after that is also Error. The first Error is always preceded by…

  • BQ Then a Tree Subsequence Coding QuestionAirbnb · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025

    For the first round, there's a reference to check, but the post doesn't say what it points to. The second round started with a quick self-introduction and some small talk with the interviewer, then went straight into behavioral questions. We got asked: Talk about a time you taught yourself something — how did you learn it, and did it end up helping you in your actual work later on? Tell me about…

  • Brex Software Engineer 50-minute React filter challengeBrex · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025

    My process centered on a single coding challenge with a very specific setup. I had to build a filter with toggles using data from a JSON file. The task involved React, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and the 50-minute time limit made it feel tight to finish. The challenge was tricky because the UI behavior had to be correct while I wired everything quickly enough to reach a working state before time r…

  • Clipboard Health Software Engineer interview with a timed technical PR assessmentClipboard Health · Software Engineer · Take-home Project · Sep 2025
    Rejected

    I went through a mostly take-home and async process, and I never really spoke with engineers. The evaluation felt opaque. First, I received emails with a repo-linked task and had roughly an hour to complete it, without any direct interaction with the company. In another step, I was given a GitHub repo and a repo or PR-style task. The focus was on the backend or frontend depending on the role, and…

  • Coding a Reimbursement System With Group LimitsRippling · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025

    The interviewer said the question was the same as what's already on the forums — build an expense reimbursement system that can freely apply different approval rules to decide whether someone's submitted expense meets the requirements and can be paid out. I also got to the second part of the question: after you've built a reimbursement approval system, can you further group reimbursements by some…

  • Coding, Networking, and a Distributed Rate LimiterGoogle · Site Reliability Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    I interviewed for a Google SRE position a few days ago. The overall difficulty wasn't especially algorithm-heavy — it leaned more toward system design, real-world troubleshooting, and coding. Interview content Coding (LeetCode style) They asked a string-processing question: given a log file where each line is "timestamp, user, action," count the number of sessions per user. It was a variant of "g…

  • Comment Box Coding Question, Rejected Two Days LaterTikTok · Frontend Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
    Rejected

    Sharing my recent TikTok front-end phone interview experience. I applied for a front-end position. The recruiter reached out about a week after I applied through the system, and we scheduled a phone screen. The technical phone screen was 1-on-1, 45 minutes of coding. The interviewer spoke English fine, but talked pretty fast. The whole pace was tight — basically no small talk, straight into it. T…

  • Cracking the 111-Statement Personality ScreenGoogle · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Sep 2025

    Google has recently started requiring candidates to fill out a kind of psychometric test that checks their tendencies and behaviors in a work environment — things like communication style, collaboration, and problem-solving ability. This helps them judge whether a candidate has the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to succeed at the company. Because of the sheer volume of applications they…

  • Cut in the Management Style RoundAnthropic · Engineering Manager · Senior+ · Onsite · Sep 2025
    Rejected

    I interviewed for an L6-7 EM role, in the pretrain org. The technical rounds were: project retrospective system design There were 3 non-technical rounds: management style strategy and execution culture The project retro was the only round with an actual engineering leader from the relevant area sitting in, and I felt like that one went pretty positively — they asked some pretty sharp questions. T…

  • Cutting Squares of Cake with Binary SearchGoogle · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    One of my interview questions: There's a table, and the top-left corner of the table is the origin (0, 0). On the table there are countless non-overlapping square cakes of different sizes. The question: how do you make one horizontal cut (parallel to the x-axis) so that after the cut, the total cake area on each side is equal? The interesting part is that all the coordinates are floats, but the s…

  • Design a Hit Counter in a Key-Value StoreDatabricks · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025

    The interviewer emphasized that he wanted me to focus on analyzing my decisions and writing high quality code, etc. The question was: design a hit counter in a key-value store. But it wasn't stated that directly at first — the interviewer built up the requirements step by step. Design a key-value store -> asked me to think about the user experience I said I'd use generics, but in the middle I mad…

  • Digit-Grid Phone Screen, Then Resource Loader and Pub/Sub System Design OnsiteRoblox · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
    In progress

    Engine-related role — all the questions were things I'd never seen anywhere on this forum before. Phone Screen: Phase 1 was an m*n grid where each cell holds a digit from 0-9. I had to collect every horizontal or vertical run of 3 or more matching digits and record each one in a results array, in the format [position, length], with the results ordered top-to-bottom and left-to-right. Phase 2 buil…

  • Discord Software Engineer interview with socket and chat server codingDiscord · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
    Rejected

    I went through an uneven Discord process. The technical experience felt rushed, poorly explained, or overly constrained, and it didn't end in an offer. The recruiter and hiring manager lead-in was relatively smooth in tone, although expectations weren't always communicated well. In the technical screen and live coding round, I worked on socket or chat server style problems under time pressure, wi…

  • Expression-to-Sum-of-Products ProblemWeRide · Software Engineer · New Grad · Technical Screen · Sep 2025

    WeRide New Grad SDE first-round technical screening, entirely on HackerRank, including video. The interviewer was 4 minutes late. We first talked about my resume for about 15 minutes — they asked how what I did during my PhD connects to an SDE role. Then we moved on to the problem, conducted entirely in Chinese. The question was as follows: Given an expression made up only of lowercase English le…

  • FastAPI CRUD Pairing, Rejected Over a Communication SlipCredit Genie · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
    Rejected

    When I was preparing, I couldn't find this question on the forum — it's a startup, so that's understandable. Here's the overall process: Hiring Manager Interview Technical Pairing, Python AI/ML Technical Pairing Systems Architecture & Design (AI/ML) Motivation + Mission Alignment Executive Interview I got cut after the first round, which combined the Technical Pairing and the Hiring Manager Inter…

  • First Onsite Round Covers ML Frameworks, Compilers, and Product SenseNVIDIA · Technical Marketing Engineer, AI Software · Onsite · Sep 2025

    Onsite interview 1/4. The first interviewer was 45 minutes, first asked about my resume, then an AI technical interview, since the role is technical marketing for AI Software. The interview was split into three parts. Part 1: Deep Learning Fundamentals Q1: In Machine Learning, what are the high-level trends happening at the framework level? I answered with the evolution from numpy to PyTorch to J…

  • Five Onsite Rounds and a CS102 RefreshereBay · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    The onsite actually required 5 rounds... my vision went black for a second when I heard that, but since they'd already given me the opportunity, I figured I'd just go ahead and interview. The five rounds included: ML implementation: chatted about my background with the hiring manager, then did a case on how to handle cache update conflicts on the server. Design: yes, you read that right, another…

  • Five Rounds, No Breaks, and a Gum-Chewing Hiring ManagerAmazon · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Sep 2025
    Rejected

    Just finished interviewing this week. Not a great experience. The whole process was rocky — I got re-matched to a different team several times, and there were two months between the phone screen and the onsite. Security & Service org. It felt like they just wanted to go through the motions, not like they actually wanted to hire me. Round three with the hiring manager was especially bad — I've nev…

  • Five-Round L6 Onsite, No Breaks, One Rough HMAmazon · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Sep 2025
    Rejected

    Just finished interviewing this week. Not a great experience. The whole process was rocky — I got switched between teams for matching several times, and there were two months between the phone screen and the onsite. Security & Service org. It felt like they wanted to go through the motions without actually wanting to hire me. The third round with the HM in particular was a really bad experience,…

  • Four OA Problems Under a Tight ClockCapital One · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025

    The first problem was to figure out how many numbers in an array are a power of some number k. Basically you check whether repeatedly dividing by k eventually gets you to 1, but you have to watch out for the special case where k=1. The second problem was about a planet's lunar calendar: given the moon phase at the start of the year, compute the moon phase on a given date. The phases cycle every 8…

  • Four Onsite Rounds from HashMap to OODGoogle · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    Here's my interview experience: Round 1: A medium-difficulty string + hashmap question. I found the approach pretty much right away and had no trouble talking it through before I started coding. At the end there was a follow-up on how to make the code more production-ready. Round 2: An easy heap question. I basically figured out to use a heap and that solved it. The interviewer was pretty nice, a…

  • Four Onsite Rounds, HM Chat Was the RoughestDoorDash · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    System Design: Three-day donations. Specifically, you build a donation entry point for users, where the user submits their personal info plus how much money they want to donate to different organizations, and the problem gives you the assumption that you're only responsible for sending the money to the company's account. During the discussion the interviewer strongly suggested making it async, bu…

  • Four Onsite Rounds, Same Image Carousel Coding ProblemDoorDash · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025

    The onsite question had already been posted before — it's the same old image carousel problem. Four rounds onsite: Coding, 75 min: still the same old question — continuing to build comment and upvote features on top of the carousel. HM behavioral, 45 min: asked some standard behavioral questions, I talked about a project conflict / mistake, and they asked one that doesn't come up often — how do y…