This was the last round — three interviews back to back: coding + debug + HM.
Coding: the interviewer had a straight face the whole time. Gave me LeetCode 1209, first simplified k down to k=3, and I solved it fast — covered edge cases and asked all the clarifying questions. The interviewer saw there was a lot of time left and started following up: first asked how to change it back from 3 to general k, I solved that fast too; then asked if this went into a production system and crashed, how would I debug it — I answered that as well; still plenty of time left, so he kept going: what if the input got huge because it's coming from S3, how do you handle that — I answered that too; still had a lot of time, so he had me write it out assuming the input isn't a list of strings but a matrix, and figure out when it would crash — first had me pseudocode it, and I got that too. At the end I turned the questions around on him and we wrapped up early. Overall it felt like I solved the main problem too fast at the start, but I answered all the follow-ups fine too, so it should be solid.
Debug: very friendly. A backend service with a bunch of test cases to debug. I talked through my thinking out loud as I worked, and the interviewer was kind about it too, dropping small hints here and there (not just when I was stuck — sometimes just mid-conversation). The one shortfall was I didn't finish debugging early — though once I did finish, I happened to have just enough time left over to ask my own questions. I'd been checking in on the time with him the whole way through, and he kept saying there was no rush, and by the end he seemed pretty satisfied, so I didn't worry about it.
HM: very friendly. Since I'd recently been systematically prepping BQ, I felt like I answered those questions pretty well, and it also showed how relevant I am to AI — we got into project details and even ran over time. At the end he asked what my next goal was, and I said I wanted to work as an SDE in AI-related roles, build up experience, and meet more great people working in the same direction. The interviewer clearly seemed satisfied and happy with that too.
Three days later I got HR's standard rejection template...
What can I even say — I got every question right, the whole experience felt great, and it's still a rejection...
My honest advice: just leave it to fate. It's pretty clear whatever they're actually evaluating has little to do with how well you perform in the interview...
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