Interview Experiences

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

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28 stories

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DatabricksSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Passed the Onsite Loop, Rejected After a Second Algorithm Round

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
DatabricksSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Dec 2025

HR to Onsite Offer, Four Rounds Split Across Two Days

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OfferOnsiteXP0
DatabricksSoftware Engineer
Nov 2025

A KV Store Question I'd Never Seen Before

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
DatabricksSoftware Engineer
Nov 2025

Stumped by a 'Fibonacci Tree' Path Question in the Technical Screen

I'd ground the recent high-frequency questions down to nothing, and then they hit me with an old, unprepared-for question: find path within Fibonacci tree. The problem doesn't give you a node structure, and you're not even allowed to write your own. The input is order: int, start: int, end: int. Find the shortest path from start to end. Right away I explained a brute force approach, and the inter…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
DatabricksSoftware EngineerSenior+
Oct 2025

Rejected Same Day Despite a Smooth BFS Solution

The interviewer was a Senior engineer, and he was 5 minutes late. He started off explaining what his team does — since this was a direct match on background with an infra team, I spent about 3-5 minutes introducing what I used to do on my previous team, and he asked me one question about it. After this intro segment, there was about 45 minutes left. The actual interview started. It was a known qu…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
DatabricksSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Design a Hit Counter in a Key-Value Store

The interviewer emphasized that he wanted me to focus on analyzing my decisions and writing high quality code, etc. The question was: design a hit counter in a key-value store. But it wasn't stated that directly at first — the interviewer built up the requirements step by step. Design a key-value store -> asked me to think about the user experience I said I'd use generics, but in the middle I mad…

Technical Screen0
DatabricksSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Passed the Phone Screen, Tripped Up by an Unusual System Programming Onsite Round

I got rejected. Overall the interviewers were all pretty nice, the whole process moved fast, and HR replied quickly too (feels like the grind-heavy companies all reply fast). It's just that they kept using the word "smart" — coworkers are all smart, they only hire smart people. I just wanted nice coworkers; "smart" doesn't really appeal to me at all, it actually made me feel some pressure. It fel…

RejectedOnsite0
DatabricksSolutions Architect
Jul 2025

Behavioral, Technical Screen, and a Week-Long CodeSignal Assessment

A while back, a recruiter from Databricks reached out about a Solutions Architect position. Since it had some relevance to my background, I figured I'd interview for it and give it a shot, so I wanted to share my fresh-off-the-press interview notes with everyone — hope this helps. The first round was a behavioral interview with the hiring manager, mainly talking about my past experience along wit…

Take-home Project0

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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