Did the OA first, two questions. The first was a somewhat convoluted binary search problem (kind of like an elevator problem), and the second was a server throughput problem solved with a heap (at the time I only managed to write a recursive solution).
After that was the tech screen. The interviewer gave a lock combination problem — find the minimum number of steps to unlock it, basically BFS.
The onsite was 4 rounds total.
Both coding rounds started with a quick chat about my resume.
The first coding round was BFS — find the nearest exit in a 2D grid, pretty standard.
The second coding round was a bit odd. It wasn't OOD, but the interviewer had really high standards for code quality and approach. The problem was generating a 2D minesweeper grid, randomly placing N mines on it. The randomization part itself wasn't hard, but after I wrote a solution with decent time complexity, the interviewer kept having me optimize further — things like removing the set, cutting down variables, simplifying the logic — it felt more like nitpicking over code quality.
The behavioral round mostly focused on a fairly large project I'd worked on. They had me draw a high-level diagram to walk through the overall flow, then asked some "tell me about a time" questions. At one point I mentioned that implementing a fairly complex API took two weeks, and the interviewer didn't seem too satisfied with that.
The system design round is probably where I got rejected (the recruiter mentioned this on a call afterward). The problem was designing an internal API: given a pickup area, return a driver queue — drivers join when they enter, and leave when they exit. I felt like I answered it reasonably well, but the interviewer was hard to read the pace with. The feedback was that I should have had more conversation instead of just giving answers.
But I've also been rejected before for talking too much and not leaving enough time to flesh out the solution, and now I got rejected for the opposite reason — it's a bit frustrating. This job market really is tough right now.
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