Airbnb Software Engineer Interview Experience — Phone Screen, Then a Five-Part Onsite With a Brutal Experience Deep Dive

Phone screen: LC 1235

Onsite

1. Coding: I prepared so much, and then they gave me a problem that wasn't from any of the interview-experience posts:

// 1: Any refund should be issued in full for a payment before considering next payment.
// 2: Refund will be prioritized among different payment methods based on such order: CREDIT, CREDIT_CARD, PAYPAL.
// 3: Refund should be issued to more recent payment.

// Example 1

// Transactions:
//     Payment1: Credit, 2023-01-10, $40
//     Payment2: Paypal, 2023-01-15, $60
// Input:
//     Refund amount: $50

// Output:
//     Refund a: linked to Payment1, Credit, $30

// Transactions:
//     Payment1: Credit, 2023-01-15, $40
//     Payment2: Paypal, 2023-01-10, $60
//     Payment3: Paypal, 2023-01-20, $40
//     Refund1: linked to Payment1, $20
// List<String>

// Refund 50
// refund a: linked to Payment1, credit, $40
// refund b: linked to Payment2, Paypal, $10

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.

2. Code review: the interviewer was genuinely helpful, you could tell he actually wanted to help. The content was about the same as the Python version already posted on the forum.

3. SD: design a notification system.

4. Experience deep dive: don't take this round lightly. The interviewer digs into the details — specifically the timeline and scope of every project you worked on, and exactly what everyone did — very, very closely. I originally thought this would be a traditional behavioral question, but I didn't answer it very well; there were some project details I just couldn't remember.

5. There's also a culture round — basically storytelling, why you like Airbnb.

Addendum (2025-01-25 15:52 +08:00):

I noticed there's an issue with the output for this coding problem — it's probably been too long and I made a typo when copying it over. From what I remember, for example 1 the output should be:

Refund a: linked to Payment1, Credit, $40
Refund a: linked to Payment2, Paypal, $10

Example 2 is correct, because the payments before the Refund1 in the input already cover the $50 that needs to be refunded.