Interview Experiences

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

Share yours, earn XP

4514 stories

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

BloombergSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

Two System Design Rounds: Holiday Service and VWAP Pipeline

A premium story — unlock it to read the full loop.

Technical ScreenPremium0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

In-Memory Malloc/Free Allocator, First-Fit to Best-Fit

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

Technical ScreenXP0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

A Coding Question With Zero Existing Writeups Online

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

RejectedOnsiteXP0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

All the Questions Were Predictable, Still Rejected

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

RejectedOnsiteXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

A Cake-Splitting Binary Search and a Mahjong Hand Puzzle

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

In progressTechnical ScreenXP0
Jane StreetSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

Rejected After a Bracket-Collapsing Code Editor Screen

A premium story — unlock it to read the full loop.

RejectedTechnical ScreenPremium0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

Five Onsite Rounds, LPs Woven Into Every One

Preparing for Amazon took me a good amount of time, and threads on this forum helped a ton, so I'm back to turn in my homework. Before I get into it: the biggest difference between Amazon and other companies is that Leadership Principles aren't a separate round — they're baked into every single round. Across my five rounds, every one of them started with twenty to thirty minutes of LP questions b…

Onsite1
SoFiSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

Three-Round Loop, System Design Swapped for a Second Coding Round

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

OnsiteXP0
AppleSoftware Engineer
Jun 2026

Six Onsite Rounds That Felt Like Six Different Companies

Six rounds, written for people as confused as I was. One thing I only understood after the whole process: this company hires by team, so each team sets its own bar and writes its own questions — which means whatever interview experience you find here for this company might be less useful than you'd hope. Over my six rounds, the six interviewers were different enough in style that it felt like six…

Onsite0
Quantitative Researcher
Jun 2026

Stopping Rules and an Adversarial Card Game

A STEM postdoctoral researcher on the West Coast reports receiving a phone-interview invitation two days after applying broadly. The author found the interviewer unfriendly and describes only a brief background discussion before the technical questions. The first problem concerned when to stop accumulating rewards from repeated die rolls, with a losing outcome that erased the accumulated amount.…

Technical Screen0
The Trade DeskSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jun 2026

Two Read-Heavy Design Rounds and a Bowling-Score Coding Question

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

RejectedOnsiteXP0
PinterestData ScientistSenior+
Jun 2026

A 30-Slide Case Round in One Hour

Overall, Pinterest's interviews really emphasize solid technical fundamentals. Stats, case, and coding all felt like final exams — the questions were dense and numerous, and they went really deep and got into a lot of detail. Most important thing is you could tell they had a specific correct answer in mind — even if you got most of the way there but didn't land on the exact right answer, the inte…

Onsite0
StripeBackend Engineer
Jun 2026

Backend Engineer

It was a multipart question. The question was based on string split, slicing, matching and basic checks. Attempting the question in python will really give us the edge instead of using any verbose language like Java. Given multiple strings separated by commas mapped as individual merchant information. First part was to retrieve merchant info from each string and then further parts was to perform…

Technical Screen0
MercorSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Mercor Software Engineer interview with concurrency and Redis

My interview was brief, around 30 minutes. The interviewer gave me some code and asked me to make it more robust. He nudged me toward concurrency and distributed-systems thinking, including how to process CSV data and coordinate synchronization with Redis. I felt behind because I was still early in graduate school and didn't have deep experience with that specific concurrency and distributed-syst…

0
ZiplineSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Zipline Software Engineer interview: large take-home and five onsite rounds

My process lasted more than three months and felt like I was constantly being passed around. I spoke with two different hiring managers, and the work they assigned was substantial: a very large take-home assignment that I put real effort into and delivered a strong solution for. During a later take-home review, I was told the work looked great and wasn’t something they saw often. Then came the on…

Take-home Project0
StackadaptSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Stackadapt Software Engineer three technical rounds

After a recruiter reached out and invited me to schedule, the process quickly became a sequence of conversations that felt somewhat shuffled compared with what I had been told. I completed an HR screen, then manager and culture-style interviews, followed by three technical rounds. Each technical round combined live coding with a system design prompt. What caught me off guard was that the intervie…

HR Screen0
StackadaptSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Stackadapt Software Engineer case study with unstable evaluation standards

My process started positively, but the final stage was deeply disappointing and left me uneasy about the evaluation standards. I was asked to complete what was presented as a case-study assignment for an enterprise agent solutions developer role. Although it was part of the interview, the work felt close to a real product and architecture project compressed into a short timeline. The most frustra…

Take-home Project0
AsanaSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Asana Software Engineer interview with a referral

My process was short and ended quickly. It started with an HR introduction call focused on standard resume and experience questions, along with how my background fit the role. It didn't feel like much of an exploration of my strengths or working style. The call felt more like someone moving through a checklist. Because I had a referral, the conversation also felt somewhat ceremonial. After the HR…

HR Screen0
AsanaAccount Executive
Reported Jun 2026

Asana Account Executive interview with six stages and a final presentation

I went through an intense, multi-step process that felt excessive for the role. After speaking with a recruiter, I had several interview rounds with detailed technical questions. The process stretched across six stages, ending with a 45-minute presentation that required a lot of preparation on top of everything else. I passed every stage with positive feedback and felt that the conversations were…

RejectedOther0
KaratSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Karat Software Engineer interview with live DS&A and platform feedback

After I received the initial email with the process details, I was invited to a technical interview. It felt straightforward. I joined a live video call and worked through a live data structures and algorithms test. Once the time was up, I received feedback on my performance. Overall, it was a good, well-run experience. I also liked that the setup felt modern and smooth, so I could focus on the w…

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