Interview Experiences

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

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9 stories

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HarveySoftware Engineer
Oct 2026

Virtual Onsite with Agentic Design, RAG Coding and Project Deep Dive

Harvey onsite I felt SF was too far away, so I chose the virtual onsite. All of the questions were repeats. The three rounds were: Agentic design RAG coding Project deep dive The interviewers were all pretty strong. They went into the agentic design round in a lot of detail, asking very specifically how I would design the evals for each component, and the chain of follow-up questions was very cle…

Onsite0
HarveySoftware Engineer
Oct 2026

Spreadsheet Formula Engine Phone Screen, Passed That Night

The problem was Spreadsheet, and because of the time limit I only finished part 1 and part 2. Part 1 was very easy. Between the two parts, the interviewer asked what tests I should write for part 2. I handwrote a few tests, and then the interviewer provided some prepared tests of their own. I think this part may be checking whether the cases you come up with fully overlap with the cases they give…

In progressTechnical Screen0
HarveySoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Phone Screen Building an Excel set_cell/get_cell in Three Scopes

Another Excel set_cell and get_cell problem. It starts out really simple and then ramps up step by step, and time was still really tight while writing it. Scope 1 Implement a simple Excel. You need and In step one, set only takes numbers, no formulas, so I'd suggest getting through it fast and not wasting time. Scope 2 Step two adds the ability to set a formula, e.g. set_cell("A1", "=B1+C1+1") or…

Technical Screen0
HarveySoftware Engineer
Sep 2026

Patterns from Seventeen Reports

The author summarizes 17 Harvey interview reports from March through September 2026. Technical screens reportedly centered on spreadsheet formulas or text highlighting, with attention to dependency cycles, evaluation timing, and whole-word matching. Onsite coding examples included an in-memory filesystem, expression evaluation, citation highlighting, and duplicate-file discovery with symbolic-lin…

Onsite0
HarveySoftware Engineer
Aug 2026

Hiring Manager Screen, Then a Spreadsheet Tech Screen I Didn't Finish

I applied online and a recruiter reached out. First round was a hiring manager screen. They asked questions like: tell me about a project I owned in the last year tell me about tough feedback I received tell me about a time I discovered an important problem outside of my immediate focus area Second round was the technical screen. It was similar to the spreadsheet question you can find online, but…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
HarveyAI Agent
Aug 2026

Three Rounds and a Frustrating Empty Office

It was a surreal onsite experience. I had practiced the phone-screen problem many times. It was the Google Sheets problem, and I finished it immediately. The recruiter told me about an hour later that I had passed, then arranged the onsite. There were three rounds. For system design, I was asked to design an agent that scores a file according to a set of rules and labels it qualified, acceptable,…

RejectedOnsite0
HarveySoftware Engineer
May 2026

Great Onsite, Rough Virtual Screen, Lost to Another Candidate

Locked — open it to unlock the full story with XP.

RejectedOnsiteXP0
HarveySoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

A File System Question and a Hard-to-Follow Interviewer

The file system question from 1point3acres. The writeup is here: a question that hasn't shown up on the forum before, basically a file system where you implement two functions: addFile(String path) — given a string like "path/to/somewhere/file.txt", store this file getFile(String path) — input "path/to/somewhere" returns file.text, input "path/to" returns the "somewhere" folder There wasn't reall…

Technical Screen0
HarveySoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

A File System Design Screen With a Confusing Interviewer

The file system question that's been going around the forum. Here's my report. Similar to a file system — implement two functions: addFile(String path): given a string like "path/to/somewhere/file.txt", store this file. getFile(String path): given "path/to/somewhere", return the content of file.txt; given "path/to", return the folder "somewhere". There wasn't much of a self-introduction, we jumpe…

In progressTechnical 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.

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