Interview Experiences

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

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4433 stories

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WaymoSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Phone Screen Passed, Rejected After a Four-Round Virtual Onsite

I got rejected after the full Waymo loop. Posting this so the people after me can avoid the same landmine. Before the interview I looked through the forum and there seemed to be hardly any Waymo reports. After finishing, I do feel there is no fixed question bank, it all depends on what the interviewer feels like asking that day. The phone screen was a variant of the number-of-islands problem, and…

RejectedOnsite0
GarminSoftware EngineerIntern
Apr 2026

In-Person Technical Test With Eight Mixed Problems

First round was a technical test that was held at the company. There were simple questions about OOP and DSA, logic and SQL. There were 8 problems. 2 of them asked me to describe the OOP principles and to identify which ones are relevant for a described situation. Then there were 2 coding problems about a square matrix (n x n). It was a circular matrix that started the indexing from the middle of…

Onsite0
RobinhoodSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Referral Graphs and a Job Scheduler

The applicant reports completing Robinhood’s three-hour onsite across three separate days. A referral-count coding problem went smoothly, but the project discussion was harder: the applicant struggled to explain the system’s complexity and scalability after the interviewer exhausted questions about business logic. The report advises preparing useful starting points for a deeper technical conversa…

RejectedOnsite0
Point72Machine Learning Engineer
Apr 2026

Rejected Over Lack of End-to-End LLM Training

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
BytedanceSoftware EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Three Onsite Rounds, Then Ghosted

Sharing my full TikTok/ByteDance (TT) loop. I interviewed at the 2-2 level. Round 1 was coding: Word Search II, with a tech lead — probably a 3-1 or 3-2. The experience was good, no different from a big-tech interview, and his English was good too. The call software had a built-in coding pad. I nailed it with a trie, ran it to test it, no problems. I don't think they have a fixed question bank fo…

No responseOnsite0
BytedanceSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

LRU Cache with a TTL Twist, Passed With Unfinished Code

TikTok engineer position, first round (technical screen). A variant of the classic LRU Cache problem (LeetCode 146). First the interviewer introduced themselves, then asked me to introduce myself. Then the interviewer asked: why are you looking to switch jobs, and why TikTok. Then it was on to coding — the classic LRU Cache problem, but with an extra requirement: support for TTL. Specifically, TT…

In progressTechnical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

an OA That Has You Debug a Password-Reset Repo with AI

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Online AssessmentXP0
Capital OneApplied Researcher
Apr 2026

CodeSignal OA with a Tetris-Style Block-Placement Problem

A friend referred me to Capital One (C1). After the recruiter phone screen, they sent a CodeSignal Online Assessment, which had to be completed within 7-10 days — 4 questions, 70 minutes total. I got the link last Friday and finished it this Tuesday. I had grinded LeetCode and the C1-tagged questions from the last three months on 1point3acres, but only the first question actually overlapped. My f…

Online Assessment0
AnthropicSoftware EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Two-Day Onsite, Likely Failed on System Design

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RejectedOnsitePremium0
AttentiveSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Apr 2026

Nailed Every Round, Still Rejected

This was the last round — three interviews back to back: coding + debug + HM. Coding: the interviewer had a straight face the whole time. Gave me LeetCode 1209, first simplified k down to k=3, and I solved it fast — covered edge cases and asked all the clarifying questions. The interviewer saw there was a lot of time left and started following up: first asked how to change it back from 3 to gener…

RejectedOnsite0
eBaySoftware EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Rejected After a Forced-JS Coding Screen

The recruiter only mentioned that the interview would cover algorithms and data structures, with no mention of a language requirement at all. Then right at the start of the interview, the interviewer told me I could only use JavaScript or TypeScript. I said I was more comfortable in Python, but I was still made to use JS/TS. This was the first time I've ever been forced into a specific language l…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
OpenAIMachine Learning Engineer
Apr 2026

Seven-Part Research Onsite, Offer a Week Later

You can find my phone screen writeup in a separate post. Since this was a recruiter reach-out, once I passed the phone screen I went straight to onsite with the team that wanted to interview me. The onsite was split into the following parts: Collaboration interview — we talked about the current SOTA in my research direction, its pros and cons, whether I had relevant technical experience, and how…

OfferOnsite0
TikTokBackend Software EngineerIntern
Apr 2026

Two Rounds, an LRU Cache, and a Cold Interviewer

Overall, the entire interview process was okay and was not difficult, but I was very disappointed with the second-round interviewer. From beginning to end, that interviewer had a cold attitude, was not very willing to help, and asked questions that were not very clear. I heard that interviewers at TikTok are assigned randomly, so if you are unlucky, you can end up with a poor interviewer. The fir…

RejectedOnsite0
DoorDashSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Rejected After Arguing Math With the Interviewer

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
Google
Apr 2026

New "Most Like Me / Least Like Me" Format

There's a change — a new question type: "Most like me / Least like me"!!! I'd read another poster's thread on this before and replied there too. (Putting everything together here so people don't miss it!) I just finished the newest GHA as of 5/xx/2026. Part one is the "Most like me" and "Least like me" questions — each one gives you three statements, and they're all positive things, so it's reall…

Online Assessment0
DatabricksSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

A Snapshot Set Iterator and an Interviewer Who Wouldn't Stop Interfering

Snapshot set iterator — the problem said the return order didn't matter. After I said I needed two data structures — a list of logs and a dict — and laid out my rough approach, the interviewer asked if I had another way to do it. Then he suggested that instead of one shared logs list for all keys, it could just be a dict where each key has its own logs, rather than all keys sharing one list of lo…

Technical Screen0
MetaSite Reliability EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Two Phone Screens and an Inexplicable Rejection

Two phone screens for Meta PE (the SRE-equivalent role there), 45 minutes each. Round 1, System (full-loop troubleshooting): same prompt as another thread posted on this forum, but the interviewer didn't seem to have a specific answer in mind. They asked a bunch of pretty open-ended things — how do you make sure everything keeps running smoothly during the days you're on call? If something breaks…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
Capital OneData Scientist
Apr 2026

Power Day With Three Back-to-Back Case Studies

Mini Case About streaming subscriptions: a new streaming service is launching, calculate the break-even point. Asked whether the break-even user count I calculated was reasonable — if not, what could be done to make it happen. Power Day Case #1 was the original weather insurance case Asked what factors to consider when it comes to the target customer Premium prepaid for 12 months: $30/month. Serv…

Onsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Dijkstra, Car Rental Scheduling, a Sharded Login-Logs Curveball, and a CNN/ML Systems Round

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

OfferOnsiteXP0
XPengData Engineer
Apr 2026

Recruiter Went Silent, LRU Cache Blank-Out

I've always dreamed of working at a self-driving company! These days, anyone who can still put their heart into working in autonomous driving really has passion for it. But unfortunately I didn't manage to make the most of my interview opportunity with XPeng :( I don't think their recruiter was very professional. I emailed the recruiter to ask if there was an interview prep guide, and after the P…

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.

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