Applied after getting a referral on 2025.10.01.
Rejected on 2025.10.14.
2025.10.19 — Got an apology email from HR saying the application was mistakenly closed, and they sent me an OA.
2025.10.21 — Completed the OA. 90 minutes, two questions, the same ones that were already known online — very easy.
2025.10.23 — Got the invite for the first two rounds, scheduled for 10.30.
2025.10.30 — Round 1 tech: given a bunch of chat logs, asked to find the k users with the most messages, essentially a variant of a classic top-k problem. We discussed three approaches — merge sort, max heap, and quickselect. I wrote pseudocode for all three and discussed time and space complexity. The round 1 BQ interviewer had a last-minute conflict, so it got rescheduled to 11.06.
2025.11.06 — Round 1 BQ. The interviewer was pretty nice, and kept saying throughout the interview that I answered really well, that he could clearly associate the qualities they're looking for with the stories I'd shared. After the interview he told me directly: you won't be held back by the BQ round, since you did really well. It was a pretty standard BQ round, nothing worth highlighting.
2025.11.07 — Got the onsite invite the very next day, scheduled for 12.02. I didn't want to schedule it that late, but HR kept telling me they really didn't have availability.
2025.12.02 — Round 2 tech 1: given a 2D matrix where the bottom-left cell is the start and the bottom-right cell is the end, and each step can only move to the cell up-right, right, or down-right — asked how many total ways there are to reach the end. I solved it with 2D DP, then did an example test-case walkthrough. The follow-up was whether I could optimize space or time. I said space could be optimized from n^2 to n, since each DP step only depends on the previous column, so you only need to store the previous column's values. I didn't have time to actually write the optimized code, but I talked through it, and the interviewer said he thought it was fine.
2025.12.02 — Round 2 tech 2: given a bunch of rental records with pickup and return times, asked how many cars would be needed in total — essentially a variant of a classic interval-scheduling problem — and I also had to return the car assignment. I first said I could construct the assignment via backtracking, but the interviewer said that was too much of a hassle. I then said I could use a min-heap to track the earliest return time, and he said okay. Then it was writing the code, an example test-case walkthrough, and discussing time and space complexity. I hadn't grinded problems in so long that I forgot the syntax for heap push and pop — the interviewer said he didn't know it either and he doesn't care, lol. Once I finished, we wrapped up the coding session early and just chatted for a bit.
Honestly none of the questions were hard, and the bar didn't feel that high either. I did so-so purely because I hadn't been grinding — if I'd gone through Neetcode 150 I probably could have aced it.
Wishing everyone good luck with their job search!
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