Outsourced recruiter call
After the referral went through, I got emails to schedule both the recruiter call and the phone screen. This round was just going over my resume and checking whether there was overlap with the target team — the whole thing was 10+ minutes, but the questions were pretty targeted.
Phone screen
A senior manager. The problem was DashMart-style — I hadn't looked at any interview writeups beforehand and went in completely cold, and somehow finished writing it in 20 minutes. Then there was a followup asking me to find the nearest Dasher for each customer. At first I kept trying to figure out if there was an O(n * m) solution, then realized it didn't seem feasible, so I wrote an O(c * n * m) solution instead, and fixed a few small bugs both by eye and by running it. I went a little over time, but she was generous and gave me a few extra minutes, then let it run a bit longer so I could ask questions.
After the call I felt like the conversation had been really pleasant, and I remember thinking it'd be great if she ended up being my hiring manager, ha. Sure enough, a week later the recruiter said I'd passed, and that the feedback was very good — next up was scheduling the HM chat.
HM call
The hiring manager. We started by introducing ourselves, then he asked about my background — I spent a good chunk of time listening to him talk about his project. It went fine, 20 minutes and done.
Virtual onsite
The recruiter said I could split it across two days, and I went with that without hesitation — otherwise it would've killed me.
SD: Notification System. One of the interviewers — seemed to be in a really good mood that day. There was one deep-dive on how to handle spikes.
HM: Standard questions — project experience, how I resolved a disagreement, a big mistake and what I learned from it. Wrapped up in 30 minutes (not sure if that's good or bad), then 15 minutes of Q&A.
CD: "Bonus Round Up" — supposedly a roundup problem but it was actually next-array-rearrangement. The interviewer was polite enough, but kept a close watch on my shared screen the whole time and insisted I explain my approach clearly before writing any code. It took me explaining it two or three times before it finally landed for him. Writing the code itself only took 10 minutes, then there was a followup about the negative-number case. After finishing there were still five or six minutes left for questions.
DK: Talking through a project. One of the interviewers, apparently pretty senior — sounded like he might have been one of the founding engineers. He sat and talked pretty casually, but had a heavy accent and stumbled over his words a lot, which made me think he must be exhausted after a full day of meetings, ha. The project I'd prepared turned out to be fairly complex, and I got the sense some of it went over his head, though he did ask a question or two throughout without giving much of a reaction either way. After 40 minutes I mentioned I actually had a second project prepared. He seemed like he'd had enough listening for the day and told me I could just ask questions instead. So we chatted for about 10 minutes, touching on industry trends and things like that. There were still seven or eight minutes left after finishing the second topic, but I figured I'd let him off the hook. He seemed a bit casual at the start but got more polite as it went on.
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