Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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34 stories

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AppleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Two Rounds, Pure Coding

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AppleDesign Verification EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

Four SystemVerilog Rounds and a Fast Offer (Plus a Google DV Rejection)

Apple Timeline: 2/10 – Went to my school's Apple Intern Networking Event, chatted with the hiring manager for a bit, and got a same-day 30-minute interview that afternoon. 2/11 – HR reached out with a positive signal and scheduled three more rounds (back to back, though one got rescheduled). 2/16, 2/19 – Interviews. 2/24 – Followed up by email; HR said they were still syncing. 2/27 – Offer call.…

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AppleAnalytics Engineer
Dec 2025

Two Technical Rounds, Rejected Despite Glowing Feedback

Apple Maps - Metrics Engineering team I'd honestly never heard of this role before. I looked up a lot of information about it, and it feels kind of like a Data Engineer role with an Analytics focus — designing data pipelines for various Apple Maps features, and designing metrics to measure the app's performance. A recruiter reached out to me, and I went into the interview with a "why not, let's s…

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AppleMachine Learning EngineerNew Grad
Dec 2025

Two Tech Screens, No Feedback on the Reject

One day out of nowhere I got an email from an Apple recruiter about an open position. Since the opportunity was there, I figured I'd interview and see how it went. First round was directly with the hiring manager — we started by chatting through my resume. The team does RAG work, and it's basically an internal group that supports the hardware team as helpers. In the last 20 minutes, they opened u…

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Apple
Dec 2025

A 45-Minute Technical Screen on Synchronizers and PPA

45 minutes total. It started with introducing the work on my resume — I talked about an IP block I designed myself. While I was talking he kept nodding, and I thought the first round was going pretty smoothly. Then he started asking some technical questions. Since I mentioned different synchronizers partway through, he asked why you'd use different synchronizers (2-stage FF, edge detect, async FI…

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AppleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Nov 2025

Aced Every Round, Rejected at Hiring Committee

The behavioral questions were all situational ones — things like what you'd do if a coworker disappeared and stopped doing their work. But it was all pretty relaxed. The interviewer even said he'd already gathered everything he needed. It felt good overall. Coding round 1 was an intervals problem — similar to one I'd seen in a previous report, where you're given a bunch of [start, end] intervals…

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AppleData Engineer
Nov 2025

Rejected After Two Technical Rounds, But the Nicest Interview Yet

Apple Maps – Metrics Engineering team I'd never heard of this role before either. I looked into it a lot, and it feels kind of like a Data Engineer (Analytics-leaning) role — designing data pipelines for various Apple Maps features and building metrics to measure the app's performance. A recruiter reached out to me, and I went into the interview just to give it a try. I ended up failing, but this…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
AppleSoftware Engineer
Nov 2025

Three-Day Onsite Full of Behavioral Questions, Then Ghosted

I got contacted by HR on LinkedIn — the team is based in Austin. The phone screen was with the hiring manager. Two questions, neither of which needed to actually run — you just had to talk through your approach. Not straight off LeetCode, but roughly LeetCode easy level. I interviewed after only a few days of grinding problems, and I still passed, so don't stress about it too much. The onsite was…

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AppleData Scientist
Oct 2025

a Quick HR Call Just to Schedule the Minicase

Simply put, it was very simple — basically no difficulty at all. We scheduled about an hour, but they actually only asked me three questions: What's your current status? What's your highest degree? When can you schedule the minicase? As long as you answer honestly there's no problem. In the middle, I also asked two questions. My highest degree is a master's, but I couldn't find my undergrad schoo…

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AppleSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Two Phone Screens, Failed on the Socket Message Round

Two rounds of phone interviews, done on two separate days. The first half of Apple's phone screens is always a behavioral question, which I thought was pretty distinctive. The first round was with an older engineer, kind of serious and not big on smiling, but you could tell he was a senior engineer. The question was to design a hit counter that aggregates how many hits happened in the past 5 minu…

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AppleSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Poker System Design, OOD Rock-Paper-Scissors, and Two Hiring Manager Rounds

Coding 1 Design a poker card system, implementing two core methods: shuffle and order. The order method needs to return a sorted list of cards by suit and rank — for example starting with 3 of Clubs, 3 of Diamonds, 3 of Hearts, 3 of Spades, and so on up through Ace. Coding 2 First a relatively simple LeetCode DFS (depth-first search) question, followed by an OOD (object-oriented design) segment w…

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AppleSoftware EngineerSenior+
Sep 2025

Passed Five Rounds but Lost to an Internal Hire, Plus Coupang, Databricks, and Mistral AI Along the Way

Background: 5.5 years of experience, all of it at second-tier companies doing infra. Goal: mainly looking to move into AI-related work. Target level is Google L5 equivalent or above. I'm not afraid of a heavy workload, I like healthy competition. Timeline: started grinding problems and sending out resumes from early February, and by early June had gradually started getting offers and wrapped up i…

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AppleData Scientist
Aug 2025

Four Onsite Rounds, No Offer

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AppleASIC Design Verification Engineer
Jan 2025

Hardcore Technical From C/C++ to SV/UVM, Almost No Behavioral Questions

Hi everyone! The job search grind is finally over, and I landed the offer I wanted. Along the way I read countless useful posts from people who came before me on this forum, and I learned a lot from them. Today I want to give back and summarize the interview experience and high-frequency topics that I and the friends around me ran into applying for ASIC Design Verification (DV) roles in North Ame…

OfferOnsite0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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