Interview Experiences

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

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35 stories

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LinkedInData Scientist
Feb 2026

Every Stats Question From the Technical Screen

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Technical ScreenXP0
LinkedInSoftware EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Five-Round Onsite, Timezone Curveball in System Design

LinkedIn onsite interview experience, giving back to the community here. Some background first: I'm an SDE3 with 5 years of experience. I'd been grinding coding problems for a while, but my system design prep was just so-so. The whole onsite was five rounds, one hour each: Round 1 was a project deep dive. I talked through two projects, and the interviewer kept the conversation pretty natural, dig…

In progressOnsite0
LinkedInMachine Learning Engineer
Feb 2026

Two Coding Rounds, an ML Foundations Deep Dive, and a LinkedIn Skills Design Question

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In progressOnsiteXP0
LinkedInData EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Aced the Coding Round, Rejected the Next Day

Unfortunately I got laid off by my old company a few weeks ago. Through a good friend's referral, I got an interview for a LinkedIn Staff Data Engineer - Information Security role. The interviewer was really friendly — the whole thing was very warm and supportive. The interview was an hour total. We started with some small talk, then he asked two questions: Tell me about a project you worked on,…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
LinkedInData Scientist
Jan 2026

Product Sense, SQL, and Python in One Screen

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Technical ScreenXP0
LinkedInData Scientist
Jan 2026

Product Sense, SQL, and a Rushed Pandas GROUP BY

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Technical ScreenXP0
LinkedInData Scientist
Jan 2026

Product Sense, SQL, and a Pandas Group-By Slip

Interviewers: the main interviewer and a shadow interviewer, both very friendly. Question 1: Product Sense — how would you analyze a drop in traffic from the Home Page to the Profile Page? (20 mins) My approach: Start with a qualitative check: open LinkedIn's homepage myself to see if there's an obvious change or bug. For example, there was a recent user report that searching for someone's name s…

Technical Screen0
LinkedInSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Onsite With an AI Debugging Round and a Week-Later Rejection

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
LinkedInSoftware EngineerSenior+
Dec 2025

Live Coding Plus an AI Pair-Programming Round

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OnsiteXP0
LinkedInSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

Phone Screen to Full Onsite, Rejected on Code Quality

Applied in a big October application wave. Interviewing for a junior role. Phone screen: 1 hour, and we spent the first 15 minutes just chatting about my resume. Question 1 was a variant of a problem I only had a coded name for — it started with just () parentheses, then the follow-up expanded it to three different types of brackets. We discussed a stack-based approach versus one using a counter,…

RejectedOnsite0
LinkedInSoftware EngineerSenior+
Oct 2025

Five-Round Virtual Onsite Undone by a System Design Question

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
LinkedInData Scientist
Sep 2025

A Technical Screen Packed with Stats Questions

No guarantee the answers here are correct, just for reference! LinkedIn Stats One bank has 5 tellers and a single line, another bank has 5 tellers with 5 separate lines — which one would you queue at? Simple statistical explanation: the "Long Plank Effect" (the opposite of the Weakest Link Effect). In a single queue, your waiting time is determined by the fastest available teller. In multiple que…

Technical Screen0
LinkedInMachine Learning Engineer
Jul 2025

Onsite Undone by a Key-Value Store System Design Question

LinkedIn, AI track. I passed the technical screen before the layoffs, and it didn't get scheduled for onsite until this week. The hiring manager round is scheduled for before National Day — nothing much to say about that yet. After preparing for so long I was actually pretty confident, but today one of the system design rounds completely wrecked me. I'm not fully willing to accept that, but I'm s…

In progressOnsite0
LinkedInData Scientist
Jul 2025

Statistics and Case-Study Questions from the Screening Round

I can't guarantee these answers are 100% correct — take them as reference only! LinkedIn Stats One bank has 5 tellers and a single line; another bank has 5 tellers but 5 separate lines. Which one would you stand in? Simple statistical explanation: the "long plank effect" (the opposite of the weakest-link effect). In a single queue, your waiting time is determined by the fastest available teller.…

Technical Screen0
LinkedInMachine Learning Engineer
May 2025

K-Means Stopping Criteria May Have Led to a Downlevel

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Technical ScreenXP0

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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