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
- The Coding Interviewer Never AppearedC3 AI · Data Scientist · Technical Screen · Aug 2026Rejected
This company still has an online OA, which I found a little surprising. It included some multiple-choice questions, and the last problem was a divide-and-conquer problem, LeetCode 395. In the first-round HM interview, the kind interviewer let me through. Second round: A 30-minute ML system-design interview. The interviewer asked me to design a shop-logistics system. Grocery-store products spoil e…
- The Coding Round Did Not Match Earlier ReportsC3 AI · Data Scientist · Onsite · Aug 2026Rejected
Process: OA → HR BQ → ML Case → ML Knowledge → Coding, for four interview rounds in total. I should be done here. OA: The same questions as the 2023 version on the forum. If you read through the interview reports here from beginning to end, you should basically be fine. HM BQ: The questions went into more detail than I expected. There were a lot of self-evaluation questions, such as what I though…
- The Final Onsite Round Was Canceled on the SpotSalient Ai · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Aug 2026Rejected
Position: Senior Software Engineer, Core Product. The onsite was in San Francisco and was originally scheduled for 3 hours. Round 1: Live coding (1 hour) Practical coding, not LeetCode. It was a duplicate-files type of question: given a set of filesystem helpers, deduplicate files by their contents. The follow-ups kept digging into I/O and read optimizations. Round 2: System design (1 hour) A que…
- Three Onsite Rounds With Two System DesignseBay · Software Engineer · Onsite · Aug 2026
Round 1 Given an array heights, where each element represents the height of a vertical line. Choose two lines to act as the walls of a container. Return the maximum amount of water the container can hold (max area). Given an array of integers temps representing daily temperatures, write a function to calculate, for each day, how many days you'd have to wait until a warmer temperature. The functio…
- Three Parts of a KYC Validation ProblemStripe · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026
KYC, but verifying things like the company name, URL, abbreviation, and description. The first part was to check whether there was a business name. Skip entries without one. For entries with a name, check whether the remaining columns all have values. If they do, it's verified; otherwise, not verified. The output is verified/not verified and the name, one line at a time in input order. The second…
- Three Phone Rounds, Three Virtual Onsite Rounds, RejectedApple · Software Engineer · Onsite · Aug 2026Rejected
This was my first time interviewing for an Apple SDE role, and it was for compute infra. Overall the experience was bad: three phone rounds, then three virtual onsite rounds. Apple hires by team, and every team has its own interview style. My team did phone interviews one round at a time, and you only got the next round if you passed the previous one. Round 1: OS and networking fundamentals plus…
- Three Rounds and a Frustrating Empty OfficeHarvey · AI Agent · Onsite · Aug 2026Rejected
It was a surreal onsite experience. I had practiced the phone-screen problem many times. It was the Google Sheets problem, and I finished it immediately. The recruiter told me about an hour later that I had passed, then arranged the onsite. There were three rounds. For system design, I was asked to design an agent that scores a file according to a set of rules and labels it qualified, acceptable,…
- Three Rounds from Streaming Top K to Payment DesignSalesforce · Member of Technical Staff · Onsite · Aug 2026
Round 1 Find the top K most frequent elements in an infinite data stream. Convert a sorted doubly linked list in place into a balanced binary search tree without creating any new nodes. Round 2 I had to implement merge sort by hand: Implement merge sort from scratch. Explain its recursion tree in detail. I also had to implement operations involving set bits and find all anagrams. Round 3: System…
- Three Rounds, Rejected in Five Business DaysAmazon · SDE 1 · Onsite · Aug 2026Rejected
Amazon SDE 1 three-round interview experience: ultimately rejected. Round 1: Coding He first had me do a self-introduction, briefly going over my career plans, and then we moved into the coding part. Q: Design a file search API backend that supports recursive subdirectory search. There are a few edge cases to watch out for here. If the input directory is null or not a directory, the output should…
- Three Screens and an Onsite InvitationAnthropic · Performance / Infrastructure Software Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Aug 2026In progress
The process up to my onsite invitation was as follows. Recruiter: passed, then waited two days. Hiring manager screen: passed, then waited two days. Technical coding phone screen: passed, then waited nine days. Onsite: scheduled. The recruiter round was very formal at the beginning. They really probed why I wanted Anthropic and why I wanted to switch jobs now. After the recruiter seemed satisfied…
- Three Threads Printing 0 Through n in OrderArize · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026
Sharing an interview from a less commonly discussed company. The problem was to have multiple threads print the numbers from 0 through n in alternating turns. Given a number n, three specified threads must cooperate to print every number from 0 through n in order. The output must also identify which thread printed each number. The thread responsibilities were: ZeroThread prints 0, and 0 can be pr…
- Three Weekly USDS Rounds Ending in RejectionTikTok · Software Engineer · Onsite · Aug 2026Rejected
The rounds were basically scheduled one per week. 1st round, coding: Use round-robin scheduling to process tasks. Each task has a task_id, seller_id, tier (VIP or STANDARD), and priority (1 is high and 3 is low). Within one seller's backlog, tasks with smaller priority numbers must be processed first. Tasks with the same priority follow their arrival order, using FIFO. Across sellers, use weighte…
- Three-Part FDE OA Building a Grocery Coupon System, Watch the RoundingPalantir · Software Engineer · Intern · Online Assessment · Aug 2026
I got the OA and worked through it in about an hour and a half. Nothing was especially hard, but watch out for rounding. I've organized everything and posted it all below. Part 1 — Initial Problem You're building a discount system for Trader Yojoe's, a growing grocery chain. Their business is thriving, but they're starting a new pilot program where shoppers can bring coupons and apply them to ite…
- Three-Part Hiring Assessment on Work Style and EthicsGoogle · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Aug 2026
These are the latest Google Hiring Assessment questions I had just finished. They were all questions I actually received. This time I took the new version of the Google Hiring Assessment. There was no coding, and it mainly had three parts. Part One: Most Like Me / Least Like Me Each question gave three statements. First I chose the one most like me, and then I chose the one least like me from the…
- Three-Part OA on Data Center RoutingStripe · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Aug 2026
Online Assessment Part 1: Data Center Registration and Health State Management Need to implement the following two commands: REGISTER : registers a data center, with a default health state of healthy. SET_HEALTHZ : sets the health state of a given data center (true for healthy, false for unhealthy). Validation rules: Latitude must be in th…
- Ticketmaster Reservations Across Regions and PlanetsA A Addepar · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026
Addepar Interview - System Design Question: Design Ticketmaster. Functional requirements: Users should be able to view events. Users should be able to search for events. Users should be able to book tickets to events. The same event has multiple sections at the same venue, and different sections have different prices. Checkout has a 10-minute time limit. After the time expires, the ticket must be…
- Tracking the Earliest Unrepeated VisitorUber · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026
An Uber phone-screen report describes a data-structure exercise for recording ID visits and retrieving the earliest ID seen exactly once. The task includes a defined result when no eligible ID remains and permits keeping the data in memory, with IDs ranging to roughly one million. The follow-up asks how to make queries constant time. The reported hint involves removing repeated IDs from the front…
- TransPerfect Project Manager Interview Experience: proofreading test and friendly interviewsTransPerfect · Project Manager · HR Screen · Aug 2026
I applied and moved through the process from July 13 to August 6. It stayed friendly throughout. After a recruiter call of about 20 minutes, I took a written proofreading test that lasted around two hours. Then I had a 50-minute online interview with the hiring manager and a department lead. The questions were relatively easy and aligned with the role. The final step was a roughly 40-minute in-pe…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: A clear view of the roleTSMC · Software Engineer · Aug 2026
The process felt organized and professional from start to finish. I began with a conversation about my background, experience, and qualifications, then the questions shifted to the role, my technical knowledge, and how I approach problem-solving. They also left time for my questions and gave me an overview of what the position would involve. What stood out was how complete the interview felt. It…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: Conflict and operational-workflow scenariosTSMC · Software Engineer · Aug 2026
I had two video-call rounds. The first was a one-on-one with the hiring manager for about an hour. The second was also about an hour and included the hiring manager and two process engineers. Both rounds asked specific questions about handling conflict and operational issues at work. They covered high workloads and efficient task management, including how I communicate, prioritize, and keep work…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: Follow-ups on behavioral storiesTSMC · Software Engineer · Aug 2026
My process had two rounds. The first began with an introduction, then moved to behavioral questions about a time I disagreed with my boss, my most difficult project, and a failure I had handled. They asked a lot of follow-ups to what I said. It felt less like working through a checklist and more like they were trying to understand how I think. The second round stayed in that same territory. It wa…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: panel interview and online assessmentTSMC · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Aug 2026
I had a panel interview with three people: a software engineer, a DevOps specialist, and an HR representative. The questions were mostly behavioral and situational, and the tone was standard and straightforward. There was also an online assessment. I did not perform as well on that part as I hoped, which made the overall experience more stressful than the interviews themselves. Despite the mix of…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: Panel interview that never moved aheadTSMC · Software Engineer · Aug 2026
My first round began with a small panel of three to four people. There was a quick assessment segment of about fifteen minutes, then the session was supposed to shift to a longer interview with a similar panel and the hiring manager. The timing became strange. When I left, I was still waiting for the interview to happen and had not heard anything back. The setup sounded normal on paper, with pane…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: semiconductor fundamentals in a three-person panelTSMC · Software Engineer · Aug 2026
I went through a tight panel interview with three employees. After a quick discussion of my background and projects, the conversation turned to semiconductors: what different functions were and how the pieces fit together. They then reviewed my resume in a more direct, detail-oriented way and said they would follow up soon. It felt focused. They were not only asking generic career questions. Ther…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: troubleshooting and behavioral problem solvingTSMC · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026
The interview focused on my background, technical experience, and how I approach problem solving. Much of the conversation covered engineering concepts and troubleshooting scenarios. The interviewers seemed interested in my reasoning, including the steps I would take to work through an issue. They also asked behavioral questions, so the evaluation was not only about knowing the material. It felt…
- TSMC Software Engineer Interview Experience: two resume-driven manager and team interviewsTSMC · Software Engineer · Other · Aug 2026
I had two interviews with managers and members of the team. The overall theme was behavioral, but there were also detailed dives into my resume. I had to explain what I had done and why, with enough detail that I could not rely on high-level descriptions. It felt as though they were connecting my previous roles to the work they expected me to do there. The pace stayed resume-driven, and I remembe…
- Two Back-to-Back Coding Rounds and a No-Feedback RejectionNetflix · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026Rejected
The questions were different from every interview report I had seen. There were two back-to-back interviews. First phone round — problem solving: Question: The ping times between cities are different. Starting from one city, find the fastest paths for broadcasting to every other city. Solution: Dijkstra's algorithm. Follow-up: If the ping times keep changing, how should the paths be updated? Solu…
- Two Back-to-Back Screens, No Break, RejectedOpenAI · Research Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026Rejected
Sharing a recent phone screen with OpenAI for an RE (security track) role. I got rejected — hope this helps people getting ready for one of these. Interview format Two rounds, 60 minutes each, back to back, with no break in between. There was no round-specific prompt, just the generic Technical Interview Preparation PDF the recruiter sends out, which I'm assuming everyone gets the same version of…
- Two Bugs, No Time, and a RejectionSnapchat · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Aug 2026Rejected
The phone-screen question was LeetCode 947. I implemented it using breadth-first search. Near the end, my code still had two bugs. I found one of them myself, while the interviewer pointed out the other one. After that, I ran the test cases. By the time the tests were finished, there was no time left in the interview. I do not know whether the interviewer had prepared a follow-up question, becaus…
- Two Cases and a Digital Product CaseCapital One · Business Analyst · Senior+ · Onsite · Aug 2026
After scheduling the interview, I had a phone call with HR. I was explicitly told that there would not be three behavioral questions. The product interview now uses only a digital product, and it includes questions related to AI. Case 1: a 90-day short-term loan. Case 2: wheat. They were exactly the same as the interview reports on the forum. Work through all of them and you will be fine! Product…
