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
- PayPay India Software Engineer interview: coding assessment and unclear follow-throughPayPay India · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Jul 2026
After a recruiter touchpoint, the process followed a structured sequence: an online coding assessment and then technical interviews. The assessment used a proctored platform and LeetCode-style problem solving, so it felt like a real filter. I scored well, then moved into backend-focused discussions and deeper computer science topics. The technical rounds covered data structures and algorithms, ba…
- Paytm Software Engineer interview: DSA, wallet design, and JavaPaytm · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
After speaking with a recruiter, I had a medium-difficulty DSA technical screen about a week later. It was a straightforward checkpoint where I needed to communicate my reasoning before, during, and after coding. The next round was harder. I received a medium-to-hard tree problem and a system-design prompt about Paytm Wallet, so I had to move from an algorithm into design trade-offs. The last tec…
- PepsiCo Account Executive behavioral interview with STAR examplesPepsiCo · Account Executive · Jul 2026Offer
The process had little friction. It began with a quick informational session that set expectations, then moved into the interview without surprises. The focus was basic fit: how I worked with people, handled conflict, and contributed to a team. The conversation was casual rather than interrogative. I discussed my background and used STAR examples for scenario questions, including a question about…
- Perfect OA, Rejected at the ML Inference System Design Phone ScreenAnthropic · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026Rejected
I bugged a former coworker for a referral, and then got rejected right at the phone screen. The round was a system design interview, a classic ML inference design question. I felt okay about it after the interview and don't know why I got rejected. There were a few points where I think I either matched what the interviewer wanted, or was way off. The interviewer gave basically no real-time feedba…
- Perfect OA, Then a Rejection After One 30-Minute Coding RoundHudson River Trading · Software Engineer · New Grad · Technical Screen · Jul 2026Rejected
OA 70 minutes, 4 problems. The first two were super easy. The third one: given an m*n array, you define a diamond by its center point and radius, compute the sum of all the numbers inside the diamond, and return the largest sum among all valid diamonds. The fourth one was street lamps: given a set of lamps, each lamp has a center c and a radius r, so the segment [c-r, c+r] is lit by that lamp. Fi…
- Perficient Software Engineer interview: agentic AI and continuous feedbackPerficient · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
I applied through the careers site and heard from a recruiter within about a week. The first phone screen covered my background and why I was interested in the role, and the process felt organized from the beginning. I then had a technical round with a senior developer that discussed technical agentic AI patterns and included some hands-on evaluation. What stood out was how smoothly the process r…
- Persistent Systems Software Engineer transparent interview experiencePersistent Systems · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
The process felt smooth from beginning to end. Recruiter communication was timely, and each step was transparent about what would happen next. The interviewers were professional and made the conversations comfortable. I discussed my background and the expertise they wanted, as well as past work and career goals. The tone stayed relaxed even when questions became more specific. I did not get an of…
- Petco Account Executive interview experiencePetco · Account Executive · Other · Jul 2026
After a recruiter screen of about 30 minutes, I had a longer hiring-manager conversation of roughly an hour. It centered on how I ran deals: sales methodology, deal cycles, and handling objections. The final stage stood out most. In a panel, I performed a mock cold call or role-play and then gave a deeper walkthrough of past numbers. That round was the most demanding, and it felt closest to testi…
- Phenom Software Engineer interview experiencePhenom · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
The interviews began smoothly and felt friendly, especially in the panel setting. Still, the questions were more demanding than I expected. Discussions of my experience made clear they wanted more than surface familiarity. In the final assessment, the feedback turned on system-design fit. That surprised me because it did not seem strongly aligned with what I had demonstrated, and it felt made up…
- Philips Software Engineer interview: rushed panel logisticsPhilips · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
My process had three rounds and felt like a quick sprint. I began with a phone screen, then had a virtual one-on-one with a manager, and finally a panel with several interviewers. The panel was not smooth: one person was on time, another arrived late, and one never appeared. I was also pushed to begin the next round immediately, so the flow felt rushed and poorly planned. The questions themselves…
- Phone Screen Package Installer, Onsite Topological SortAmazon · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026
Phone Interview Given a mapping (Map / Adjacency List) of software packages and their dependencies, write a class or method to install a specified package along with all of its dependencies. Assume each package object has an install() method that only installs that package itself and does not handle its dependencies. Need to implement an installWithDependencies(package) method that makes sure all…
- Phone Screen Plus a Pin Score Tracker Onsite RoundPinterest · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026
Phone Screen: problem similar to leetcode 815. Virtual onsite Interview 1 (DS): Imagine each Pin on Pinterest has a "trending score" associated with it. You're asked to build a feature which keeps track of all the Pins a user has seen in the last week and at any given time shows the top trending Pin that has been viewed by this user. (ie. Of all the Pins user123 has viewed in the last 24 hours, l…
- Phone Screen Plus Five Onsite Rounds, Then an OfferDatabricks · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jul 2026Offer
End of June: Phone Screen — Coding: KV Store + Hit Counter Implement a KV Store that also supports tracking averageGet and averagePut. The main focus was on how to maintain a sliding window, and the follow-up extended it to stats over the past 1 hour, 1 day, and 1 week. Early July: Onsite 1 — Coding: File Encryption Tree Optimization Given a file system tree made of DirectoryNode and FileNode, wh…
- Phone Screen With a Four-Part GET Request and IP Counting Task, Then SilencePinterest · Site Reliability Engineer · Senior+ · Technical Screen · Jul 2026No response
I have no SRE experience, but I have 7 years as a cloud SDE and I've always been part of the oncall rotation. I was recently laid off and I'm in a hurry to find a job. Pinterest didn't have a role that fit me especially well, so I just applied to a Senior SRE role to try my luck, and I got a phone screen invitation. The recruiter said the early questions would be similar to LeetCode coding proble…
- Phone Screen, Onsite with Graph DB Design, Then SilenceUber · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026No response
Phone screen: similar to the Design Meeting Scheduler on hack2hire, but simpler. Onsite: coding 1 was serialization and deserialization of an n-ary tree. Coding 2 I really can't remember. The system design was about using a graph DB to store who can access which resources (this was role-related, not a general system design), how to migrate over from the existing DB, how to design the schema, scal…
- Phone Screen, Then a Five-Round Onsite With Code ReviewMongoDB · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jul 2026Offer
I've just come out the other end of the MongoDB interview process, and I wanted to share how I got ready, since other people's write-ups helped me so much. I'm a backend engineer by trade, with time at a large tech company and at a startup. Over the course of this job hunt I had a handful of interviews in flight simultaneously, yet MongoDB topped my wish list, and that's where I landed an offer.…
- Phone, Virtual Onsite, and a Silent Extra RoundOpenAI · Software Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026Rejected
Sharing my recent interview experience, hopefully it helps folks interviewing later avoid the same landmine. Phone Screen: Coding: Design a social media feed, Part 1 and Part 2. I didn't fully finish it, but I talked through my remaining approach. System Design: Sora. The interviewer pressed on some details, including why I chose AWS SQS and how to handle various failure cases. Virtual Onsite: BQ…
- Phonepe Software Engineer interview: DSA and order-feed designPhonepe · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
After a recruiter-style touchpoint, the process became technical quickly. I had a machine-coding round on a hackathon platform with a live panel and several candidates on the call. The interviewer gave the problem, I worked alone in a tight window of about 90 minutes in one phase, and I sent my working solution to the recruiter in a zip file. Soon afterward, an interviewer reviewed my work in a r…
- Pinterest Account Executive interview: consecutive sales interviewsPinterest · Account Executive · HR Screen · Jul 2026
After the recruiter screen, I had three interviews in a row, with behavioral questions mixed with more technical prompts. There was almost no downtime between conversations, so I had to stay sharp throughout. The middle conversation was with the hiring manager, followed by two peer interviews. One leaned more technical and the other more toward behavioral fit. The difficulty felt fairly even. It…
- Pinterest Machine Learning Engineer interview: ML theory and quick rejectionPinterest · Machine Learning Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026Rejected
The loop was short but rough. In the initial conversation, I tried to explain my projects, but the interviewer did not seem willing to listen. I then had a technical machine-learning session covering core theory, including vanishing gradients and ensemble methods such as bagging and boosting. There was also a LeetCode-style problem for about 30 minutes. The process ended quickly, and I received a…
- Pinterest Software Engineer interview experiencePinterest · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
The technical screen was difficult in a specific way: it was a LeetCode medium-to-hard problem with about an hour to solve it. I could receive hints, but was still expected to reach the solution myself instead of relying on help. Even with collaboration allowed, the clock mattered heavily. I did not progress to an offer, and the high bar left the familiar feeling that being almost there was not e…
- Pinterest Software Engineer interview: interrupted virtual technical questionsPinterest · Software Engineer · Jul 2026
The interviewer sent the wrong virtual-meeting link and arrived about five minutes late, which set the tone. During a warmup that was basically a Boyer-Moore Voting Algorithm variation, they kept interrupting as I tried a brute-force implementation to understand the problem. I could not finish my thought. That happened again on a graph-traversal question. The interviewer seemed disengaged from th…
- Pivot Table Phone Screen, Two of Three Parts DoneSigmacomputing · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
The interviewer was very friendly. The question was a pivot table. I had reviewed this problem beforehand, but the input format was different from the one I had prepared for, so at the start I spent a long time confused about how to hook up to this input. The input format from my interview is below. The follow-up was to output running / grand totals on the x axis and the y axis. I ran out of time…
- Plangrid Account Executive interview: next-day executive pitchPlangrid · Account Executive · Other · Jul 2026
The process quickly became presentation-heavy. I met with my line manager for about an hour, then was asked to prepare a pitch presentation for a top executive the next day. The request was clear, but the short notice and the way it was handled felt extremely unprofessional. The contrast stayed with me: substantial work was required quickly, then about three months passed before I finally receive…
- Plangrid Full Stack Engineer five-round interview experiencePlangrid · Full Stack Engineer · HR Screen · Jul 2026Rejected
My process moved quickly through five rounds: a short HR screen, a hiring-manager interview, back-to-back technical interviews covering backend and frontend, and a cultural-fit round. The pace made me switch constantly between behavioral prompts and technical questions. I struggled in the technical rounds and did not clear that part. I heard the result after about two weeks. The sequence did not…
- Plangrid Software Engineer interview: 600-point assessment and two technical roundsPlangrid · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Jul 2026
I began with an online assessment scored out of 600. It worked as a straightforward filter, and after I cleared it I had two technical rounds. Those interviews focused on programming and SQL-style questions, with DSA, basic system design, and role context also coming up. After the second technical round, I expected a final wrap-up through the college-placement track. Instead, I did not get a clea…
- Playlist Image Upload Design and an AI-Heavy Behavioral RoundSpotify · Backend Engineer · Onsite · Jul 2026Offer
The offer finally arrived from the company I'd been targeting, and the number beat what I was expecting. Over a year ago I landed a Spotify interview by applying cold, which surprised me, since my background is a good (though not target) school and an employer people know but don't think of as big tech, and certainly not FAANG. Apart from internships, I had never been through a proper interview l…
- PNC Financial Services Group Software Engineer interview experience: recorded interviewPNC Financial Services Group · Software Engineer · Technical Screen · Jul 2026
After applying, I completed a recorded interview and then moved into a superday-style session with managers. They were friendly and professional, and the process felt straightforward rather than especially stressful. The recruiter arranged more time after the recorded step. A follow-up call led to a hiring-manager interview with basic technical questions, plus behavioral and technical discussion…
- PNY Software Engineer interview: assessment, HR phone, manager video and in-person finalPNY · Software Engineer · Online Assessment · Jul 2026Offer
After applying, I completed an online assessment, then had a phone interview with HR, a video interview with the hiring manager, and a final interview in person. It felt high-pressure, with several checkpoints before I reached the later stages. The questions were not described to me in detail. What stood out was moving through the different formats: phone screening, a manager discussion by video,…
- Pool Hire to Team Match, Onsite, Now at Reference CheckAnthropic · Software Engineer · Senior+ · Onsite · Jul 2026In progress
Two working days after my referral, a recruiter contacted me. I interviewed for a senior SWE role. Step one was the OA. The problem was a bank system. I had prepared for it ahead of time, so I just had the answer memorized, and I got a perfect score. I heard it's best to get a perfect score. Recruiter call: they ask why Anthropic and what you think about AI safety. Phone screen coding: cat image…
