Interview Experiences

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

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3 stories

Likes earn the author +10 XP for the first 3 likes each day

DecagonSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Shopping Cart Versioning, Then Rejected on Tic-Tac-Toe

Round 1 was the shopping cart problem that other interview reports have also mentioned, but part 2 seemed a bit different. You're building a shopping cart for a cooking app. Users can add recipes to their cart. Each recipe has a list of ingredients (e.g., Chicken, Garlic). When the same ingredient appears across multiple recipes, the total count qualifies for bulk discounts. Part 1 was the same a…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
DecagonAI Engineer
Jul 2026

A Tic-Tac-Toe Sequence-Counting Problem in the Coding Round

I recently interviewed for Decagon's AI Engineer role, first round (the coding round), and got a question that doesn't have an exact match on LeetCode, so I wanted to share it. Problem Two players take turns placing marks on a 3x3 board, X goes first, then O, alternating. A game is the entire sequence of moves from an empty board to the end of the game. The game ends immediately as soon as one si…

Technical Screen0
DecagonSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

CSAT Tracker Question on the Phone Screen

I interviewed for 45 minutes and got one question. I'd solved it before, but I still wrote two bugs. Luckily I caught and fixed both while testing, and it passed in the end. Thanks to the interviewer for going easy on me. The question was the one that comes up most often for the phone screen: design a customer satisfaction (CSAT) tracking class. Scores are fixed in the range 1 to 5. __init__(self…

Technical Screen0

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.

Share your experience to earn XP