Interview Experiences

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

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40 stories

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ByteDanceMachine Learning EngineerNew Grad
Oct 2026

Research Talk, Model Questions and a Fishing Pond Coding Problem

First was a self-introduction, then I introduced my research. He said I could share slides if that would make things clearer. I happened to be preparing my proposal recently, so I shared my slides, and it definitely felt better than just talking through it. He asked some questions based on my work, normal follow-ups. Interestingly, he also brought up jev and asked whether I follow it. Then on the…

Technical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware EngineerIntern
Sep 2026

E-commerce Backend, One Technical Round Ending on Spiral Matrix Follow-ups

TikTok SWE Intern, E-commerce Backend. Referral. One virtual round. Rejected. Background Applied through a referral. Position and team: E-commerce Backend. Timeline 08/06 applied 08/07 received the OA 08/23 HR scheduled the interview 09/11 first technical round 09/26 got the result (rejected) Round 1, Technical (1 hr) The interviewer spoke Chinese and the whole thing was in Chinese. Self-introduc…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Failed the TikTok LIVE Phone Screen on Graph Coloring

The role came from a TikTok HR reach-out. There was no HR call, they only asked about my sponsorship situation over email and then scheduled a 1-hour phone interview. The interview was on HackerRank. I started with a self-introduction, then a behavioral question: tell me about a challenge. After that came a LeetCode problem, Possible Bipartition: > Split a group of n people (labeled from 1 to n)…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Sep 2026

TikTok E-commerce First Round: Tic-Tac-Toe Game-Over Check Pushed Down to O(1)

Team: e-commerce Interview language: Chinese Round: first round It went straight into coding. I had GPT reconstruct the coding question, so just bear with it: The problem is a modified version of LeetCode 348 Design Tic-Tac-Toe. The difference is that it doesn't ask you to design a TicTacToe class and move(). Instead you're given the current n x n board directly and you implement GameOver(board)…

In progressTechnical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Three Rounds and an HR Call, Then Silence

I interviewed with TT USDS: three rounds, then an HR call, and then I never heard anything back. I don't know whether I got rejected. Round 1: two coding questions, LeetCode 3 and LeetCode 210. Round 2: a variant of LeetCode 207. I forgot how it was changed. For the rest of the time they kept asking me tech questions about monitoring, tracing, and telemetry. Round 3: system design. Design a payme…

No responseOnsite0
ByteDanceSoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Rejected After a TikTok Trust & Safety System Design Round on a Video Moderation Pipeline

Interviewed in June. Second round: system design interview, 1 hour. Project deep-dive (about 20 minutes). System Design — Video Content Moderation System Question: design a simplified video content moderation system. The interviewer scoped it very clearly: I didn't need to design the video upload part — assume there's already a system that pushes uploaded videos to you. What I needed to design wa…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware EngineerIntern
Aug 2026

Agent Metrics, Tool Debugging, and Graphs

The interviewer opened with, "Do you speak Chinese?" After I said yes, we spoke Chinese for the entire interview. I gave a brief introduction, then we went straight into questions. Fundamentals / business design Memory and virtual memory: Follow-up: What is virtual memory for? Follow-up: Can virtual memory space (VRAM) be larger than physical memory (RAM)? The reasoning we discussed: Yes. Virtual…

Technical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Aug 2026

Graph Coding Then a Ticket Booking System Design

Round 1: Coding The first round was coding. The problems were mainly graph / topological sort related. Overall the difficulty was not especially high; if you prepare graph, BFS/DFS and topological sort normally, you should be able to cover it. Round 2: System Design The second round was system design, and the question was to design a ticket booking system (a system for grabbing tickets the moment…

In progressTechnical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Alien Dictionary and One Costly Indentation Bug

The problem was Alien Dictionary. I expected the interviewer to ask about my background in detail, but the interview opened directly with a LeetCode problem. I knew how to solve this one, but I could not write it bug-free. I eventually found that I had indented a break statement in the wrong place. I managed to get my own test to pass before the interview ended, but the interviewer's feedback was…

Technical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Aug 2026

Backend Fundamentals, Databases, and One DFS Problem

First round: technical interview. The interviewer was based in China. The interview leaned toward backend fundamentals, databases, middleware, and web protocols, followed by one algorithm problem. Deep dive into resume projects The interviewer asked about past projects on my resume, focusing on project architecture, the reasons for technical choices, and implementation details from the business l…

Technical Screen0
ByteDanceSenior SDE, Quality Platform & AI Test AutomationSenior+
Aug 2026

AI QA Workflow Design and an Unfinished Merge Intervals

Good luck to everyone. I hope my bad example can help someone. Location: San Jose Role: Senior SDE, Quality Platform & AI Test Automation Interviewer: The team's QA leader; the interview was in Chinese over video with a shared whiteboard. Background: More than ten years in DevOps and engineering productivity. I have built CI/CD platforms and an AI code-review platform. How the interviewer framed…

Technical Screen0
BytedanceBackend EngineerNew Grad
Jun 2026

A Rapid-Fire Technical Screen Covering MySQL, Redis, SQL, and a Binary Tree Problem

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OfferTechnical ScreenPremium0
ByteDanceBackend EngineerIntern
May 2026

A Fundamentals Marathon and a Second Shot at an Old Coding Question

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Technical ScreenXP0
BytedanceSoftware Engineer
May 2026

One "Coding" Round That Was Mostly Resume Deep-Dive

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RejectedTechnical ScreenPremium0
BytedanceSoftware Engineer
May 2026

TikTok's Twist on the K-Group List Reversal Problem

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Technical ScreenXP0
ByteDanceSite Reliability EngineerSenior+
May 2026

A Smooth Project Round Followed by a Rough Linux Screen

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
BytedanceSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Real-Time Likes System Design, Rejected 3 Days Later

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
BytedanceSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Five Onsite Rounds in Two Days, Two Hards, and a Last-Minute Add-On Round

Five rounds plus one add-on round, the most intense interview I've had this year. Fair warning up front: the intensity here is not the same league as other places. Five rounds packed into two days, two of them straight-up hard, and then they tacked on an extra round at the last minute. By the evening after I finished I was basically wrecked. Some interviewers were Chinese, some were not. All the…

Onsite0
ByteDanceSite Reliability Engineer
Apr 2026

Coding Round Caught Me Off Guard, Rejected

I mass-applied online. They reached out within 1-2 days, and the interview got scheduled right away. The first round was pretty easy — a binary search type problem, not from LeetCode. Find something in a sorted array. I spent a good chunk of the remaining time just chatting with the interviewer about the company. For the second round I was expecting behavioral/fundamentals stuff — Linux/network/k…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
ByteDanceSoftware EngineerIntern
Apr 2026

Four Difficult Online Assessment Questions

There were four questions in total, and they were quite difficult. Question 1 Description Given an array of positive integers numbers, calculate how many of its elements have an even number of digits. Note: The solution did not need to be optimal, but a time complexity no worse than O(numbers.length^2) would fit within the execution time limit. Example For numbers = [12, 134, 111, 1111, 10], the…

Online Assessment0

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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