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
- Phone Screen With an AI Prompting Round, Then SilenceIntuit · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025Rejected
Got a reach-out from HR two weeks ago and scheduled it. The phone screen was 45 minutes of algorithms + 30 minutes of AI conversation Q&A, all in one call. 45 min algorithms: One medium-difficulty problem One easy problem — basically detecting in a React environment whether user input is a valid palindrome 30 min AI: Mainly about whether you know how to use current gen AI tools and whether you ca…
- Phone Screen, Then a Five-Part Onsite With a Brutal Experience Deep DiveAirbnb · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
Phone screen: LC 1235 Onsite Coding: I prepared so much, and then they gave me a problem that wasn't from any of the interview-experience posts: Honestly the problem itself wasn't hard, but you had to handle the input/output strings yourself. I used Java, and with 45 minutes that also had to include small talk, I was pretty nervous, and it was just annoying. Code review: the interviewer was genui…
- Poker System Design, OOD Rock-Paper-Scissors, and Two Hiring Manager RoundsApple · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
Coding 1 Design a poker card system, implementing two core methods: shuffle and order. The order method needs to return a sorted list of cards by suit and rank — for example starting with 3 of Clubs, 3 of Diamonds, 3 of Hearts, 3 of Spades, and so on up through Ace. Coding 2 First a relatively simple LeetCode DFS (depth-first search) question, followed by an OOD (object-oriented design) segment w…
- Recruiter Chaos and a Final Round That Ended Before I Wrote Any SQLTikTok · Data Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025In progress
I interviewed with a team under USDS for a data engineer role. The questions were really weak, so I'm mainly going to focus on the whole process instead. Right now I've just finished one HR round plus three Zoom call rounds. First, I had a friend at TikTok (not on the USDS team) refer me for a bunch of positions, but I only got one rejection back — never heard anything about the rest. Then, almos…
- Recruiter Chaos, a Skipped OA, and a Data Modeling Round With No CodeTikTok · Data Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025In progress
I interviewed for a data engineer role on one of the teams under USDS. The questions were pretty weak, so I'll focus mostly on the process instead. Right now I've just finished one HR round plus three Zoom call interviews. First, I had a friend at TikTok (not on the USDS team) refer me for a bunch of positions, but I only got one rejection back — no response on any of the rest. Then, almost a mon…
- Recruiter Forgot About Me, Then a No-Coding Cloud RoundSalesforce · Software Engineer II · Onsite · Sep 2025
In April, a recruiter reached out and scheduled a video call to get a sense of my situation. They mentioned there would be a lot of openings coming after that. In June I noticed a large number of Salesforce job postings, but the recruiter had forgotten about me, so I emailed to nudge them. I was interviewing for SDE 2. Round 1: hiring manager screening. Mostly asked about my background and why I…
- Recruiter Gave a Last-Minute Ultimatum for the Only Onsite SlotAmazon · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
I still don't know why they gave me SDE1 despite having 1.5 years of experience. The recruiter was toxic — no response the day I reached out, and then the next morning, before I was even out of bed, they called me and said there was only one interview slot available, and if that didn't work for me they'd just reject me. So I basically got pushed into it with no time to prepare. I interviewed last…
- Recruiter Screen Grills You on K8s, Bare Metal, and Fleet ManagementLambda · Software Engineer · HR Screen · Sep 2025
Basically it's the company introduction, but they also do an initial screen within it — they ask you about some terms and questions, then write down your explanations for the hiring manager. They'll tell you they're using a Google Meet transcript for this; if you don't want that, the recruiter just listens to you and matches keywords instead. Some of what they asked about: Experience in Infra as…
- Recursion Blocked in Favor of a StackApplied Intuition · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
The question was a new one I hadn't seen before — roughly, implement an in-memory key-value store that supports transactions. Your system needs to process a series of commands that assign values to variables, print variable values, and manage transactional blocks. The tricky part is that you can assign to a variable that was already assigned before entering the transaction. My first instinct was…
- Scala Trivia, Then a Surprise LeetCode ClassicAdobe · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025Rejected
This is one of the many applications I scattered around blindly. I applied to GenStudio on the DX team (people on the forum say DX is a "poison team," same as AEP?). When I applied, it happened to line up with Adobe's legendary summer break, so by the time HR came back from vacation and finally reached out to me, I'd already piled up several rejection letters from other places, hah, wry laugh. Th…
- SQL String Ops and a 20-Minute OOD ScreenBloomberg · Data Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
The role was Senior Software Engineer - Data Engineering. I couldn't really find much interview experience for this role online, so let me contribute one here. The interviewer was a woman, not very enthusiastic. 40 minutes, 2 questions — the first was SQL, the second felt more like OOD. The first SQL question wasn't too hard logically, the hard part was that it tested string operations. I roughly…
- Straight to Onsite, Rejected After One Weak ReviewGoogle · Software Engineer · New Grad · Onsite · Sep 2025Rejected
Referred by a friend on 4/7 for an early career role. Got an "aha" notification on 4/20, HR reached out on 5/1, and had the HR call on 5/13. No OA, no phone screen — straight to onsite. 3 coding rounds + 1 BQ round. I got lucky — all 3 coding interviewers turned out great. Round 1 was a trie problem. The problem statement wasn't very clear, and I got nervous while coding, so I forgot to store res…
- Strong Onsite Undone by a Brutal CEO CallTrexquant · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025Rejected
This is a niche quant firm. I interviewed for the software engineer role, which required strong C++ — after this point, all the coding rounds were C++ only. Recruiter chat: besides the usual questions, they threw in some C++ trivia on the spot, things like what default constructors a class can have. PM chat: I talked with their Lead PM, a very sharp guy. He mostly asked about my resume, and a lot…
- Three Coding Rounds, One Rough System DesignPinterest · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
Overall it wasn't too hard — three coding rounds, one system design round, and one BQ round — but the system design round was really brutal... Here are the details: Coding: I'd never seen this one before. They give you a pre-written class that has a next() function — each call returns a string, roughly like this: "one//ntw", "o//n", "three//nfour", "//nfi", "ve" You're supposed to write your own…
- Three of Four Levels on the Bank System QuestionMeta · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025
Bank System. This is an old question that has shown up on the forum before. Level 1: implement the createAccount, deposit, and pay methods. Level 2: find the top N activity, based on the sum of deposit and pay amounts. You just maintain a size-N min-heap with a priority queue. Level 3: When you transfer, you hold the money from the source account; when you accept, it actually moves to the target…
- Three Onsite Rounds in One DayBloomberg · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025In progress
This week's onsite report — all three rounds happened on the same day, and I probably failed. In the third round, the manager didn't ask me anything at all, he just told me straight up to ask him any questions I had. I stayed calm and asked a few things, it took about half an hour, then he said I could ask one last question and that was it. Round 1: coding Round 2: SD, with the team lead Round 3:…
- Three Tech Rounds in Two Days, Rejected at the Offer StagexAI · Machine Learning Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025Rejected
I got a reach-out this September. I'd heard Elon's company pays really well, so I did a phone screen with the company. It was 15 minutes: we introduced ourselves, then they had me walk through how I collected and processed the data for a project on my resume, followed by some questions about how I think about data vs. downstream task impact. We went a bit deeper into some technical questions from…
- Three Whiteboard Coding Rounds on HackerRankCerebras · Software Engineer · New Grad · Onsite · Sep 2025Offer
Last year I interviewed at this company and got the position, working on kernel implementation. They design their own chips, and I found their architecture really cool. I already had some experience with custom accelerator design. I applied for an entry-level position. I'd done some research in this area during college, which helped both with getting a referral and getting the company interested…
- Tree Sums, a Retry HOF, and a Rental Watchlist Design QuestionAirbnb · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
The interview was on the easier side. The algorithm question was about a tree, where the leaves are numbers and each parent node's value equals the sum of its children. You need to be able to get the value of any given node. The second part adds a mutation: you can turn a node into a leaf, or take a leaf and attach a subtree to it, turning it into a parent node. Again, you need to be able to get…
- Trie Question, Five-Round Virtual Onsite, and an Unprofessional HR TwistOracle · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025Offer
Phone screen (1 round): the interviewer ran the call (I remember his title was something like "senior engineer," though the way it was phrased sounded more like "elderly engineer"). He gave a trie + backtracking question. The prompt: the user types in a string prefix, and you return the 5 most similar existing words. You need to implement two APIs: a. add a word; b. search for a word. If fewer th…
- Twitch Software Engineer interview with a 45-minute hiring manager technical roundTwitch · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025
I interviewed for a Software Engineer role at Twitch. The process followed a typical assessment, then hiring manager flow: recruiter outreach, a CodeSignal assessment, and a short technical interview. The recruiter explained the role and contacted me to start the process. I completed the CodeSignal assessment, waited a few days, and then had a 45-minute technical interview with the hiring manager…
- Two OA Questions, No Hidden Test CasesGoogle · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025In progress
I finally got my Google OA, and I'm posting here right after finishing it. This OA had 2 questions total, 90 minutes, which keeps Google's usual style. Both questions were not too difficult overall. Problem 1 (paraphrased) You have a one-dimensional board, and each cell can be in one of three states: empty, a piece, or a coin. On each turn, you can choose any piece and move it 3 cells to the righ…
- Two Online Assessment Questions on Calorie-Maximizing Jumps and Password SimilarityAmazon · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025
Question 1: Problem description: A user is doing jump exercises using an Amazon fitness tracker. There are n blocks of different heights (height[i] is the height of the i-th block). The user starts from the ground (height 0) and must jump to every block exactly once, with the goal of maximizing calories burned. The calories burned jumping from block i to block j are calculated as (height[i] - hei…
- Two Phone Screens, Failed on the Socket Message RoundApple · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025Rejected
Two rounds of phone interviews, done on two separate days. The first half of Apple's phone screens is always a behavioral question, which I thought was pretty distinctive. The first round was with an older engineer, kind of serious and not big on smiling, but you could tell he was a senior engineer. The question was to design a hit counter that aggregates how many hits happened in the past 5 minu…
- Two Rough Phone Screens and a Cryptic Tree PuzzleBloomberg · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Sep 2025No response
The interview experience itself was actually pretty good in one sense — just spray and pray, blindly mass-applying with your eyes closed, and there's a decent chance you'll land some phone screens. I landed four HR calls total: one slot already got filled, another is still waiting to be scheduled, so right now I've actually done two phone screens. But honestly, the experience itself was not great…
- Two Rounds and a Verbal Offer Tied to Internship LengthAmazon · Front End Engineer · Intern · Technical Screen · Sep 2025Offer
OA outcome: I solved both algorithm questions (passed all the test cases). For the behavioral part after that, I just went with my own gut feeling — the work simulation section was mostly about logic, and I hadn't looked at Amazon's Leadership Principles beforehand. Interview experience: The interview experience was really good — the interviewer was warm and respectful, and gave a lot of hints an…
- Virtual Onsite with BQ, an OO Ticket System, and a Recommendation EngineAmazon · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025
This was a virtual onsite. The interviewer told me right away that he'd be taking a lot of notes, so I shouldn't read too much into it. BQ section: The first question was on "Ownership" — he asked if I'd ever run into something that wasn't technically part of my responsibilities but I went ahead and took care of it anyway. The second was "Deliver Results" — he asked for an example of delivering s…
- Waiting on Team Match After the Exact Same Loop as Last YearInstacart · Software Engineer · Onsite · Sep 2025In progress
My virtual onsite (VO) was two weeks ago, and I got the result last week — I'm through, and now I'm waiting on team match. Coding round 1: two questions, both about shopper deliveries. The first one referenced something specific that doesn't translate cleanly from how I originally wrote it, so I can't say more about it here. The second one was a bit more involved, but if you'd already seen the fi…
- Warehouse-Capacity Routing and a Pair-Sum-With-Updates ProblemVisa · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Sep 2025
Questions one and two were pretty easy, I don't really remember them. Three: The prompt was long. You're given an int array representing the capacities of warehouses 0 through n - 1, plus an array of events. Events are either "PACKAGE" (process one package) or "CLOSURE X" (close warehouse N). Packages start being processed at warehouse 0, and once a warehouse hits capacity, the next warehouse tha…
- 45-Minute SQL and A/B Test Screen for L5 Product AnalyticsMeta · Data Scientist · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Aug 2025
I've been a statistician for two years, and now I'm trying out DS or quant. In late August, Meta's HR reached out to me for an L5 Product Analytics DS interview. After the HR screen, the first technical round was 45 minutes, with 1 SQL question and 1 product question. The setup: an advertiser has a shop on FB and also has their own website. After FB serves a user an ad, they look at whether the c…
