Interview Experiences

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

Share yours, earn XP

24 stories

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

SnowflakeSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Binary Search on Error Logs, Then a Graph BFS/DFS Follow-up

A classic problem in application-question form. Binary Search The input is a log history. There are three kinds of logs: Info, Warn, and Error, and each log starts with its own type — for example, an Info-type log looks like "[Info] ...". The log history follows two patterns: Once an Error shows up, the service is down, and every log after that is also Error. The first Error is always preceded by…

Technical Screen0
SnowflakeSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Log Binary Search With Two Graph Follow-ups

A classic problem in applied-problem form. Binary Search The input is a log history. There are three types of logs: Info, Warn, and Error, and each log line starts with its own type — for example an Info log looks like "[Info] ...". The log history follows two patterns: Once an Error shows up, the service goes down, and every log after that is Error The log right before the first Error is always…

Technical Screen0
SnowflakeSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

A Trie Backtracking Bug I Never Fixed

First round: the interviewer — I really feel bad, she kept trying to help me the whole time, but in the end I still didn't get the bug fixed within the hour. The input is a string array: [California, California/San Francisco, California/San Francisco/7th Street], etc. The other input is an array of the nodes to delete, e.g. [California/San Francisco], and the return should be [California]. LeetCo…

Technical Screen0
SnowflakeSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

A Quota System Design That Ran Out of Time

Interview process Both sides introduced ourselves. The interviewer asked about one of my projects — I don't quite remember what exactly they asked. Then system design. Then I asked the interviewer some questions. System design Question: design a Quota System that's shared by multiple upstream services. For example, Google Drive and Google Photos share 100GB of space, and each user has one global…

RejectedTechnical 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