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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MetaSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

OA for a Brand-New AI Native Team

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In progressOnline AssessmentXP0
PerplexitySoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

A 4-Part 'Todo List for AI' Coding Round

I applied through LinkedIn. The first round was with a recruiter who just asked some basic info, then scheduled a coding round. It had to be done in Python. The coding round question was the "implement todo list for AI" one that's already been posted on the forum. There were 4 parts total. I only got through the first two parts before running out of time. The second part was a pain because every…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
MetaBackend Engineer
Apr 2026

Interviewed for E5, Downgraded to E4 After the Onsite

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In progressOnsiteXP0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Strong Start, Onsite Set Up to Fail

Sharing my full Airbnb loop. A friend's classmate referred me in, and I got a response the very next day. Here's the weird thing: the first round was a phone screen with the hiring manager — an HM based somewhere else — 30 minutes, and it went really well. He was a genuinely nice guy, and you could tell right away he was a good manager. What he worked on matched well with my background too, and I…

RejectedOnsite0
OpenAIMachine Learning Engineer
Apr 2026

Task Scheduling and Monster Battle Simulation Coding Rounds

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OnsiteXP0
ChariotSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

An Interactive HTTP Maze Coding Challenge

I got reached out to by a headhunter by chance — they said it's a company doing a DAF (Donor-Advised Fund) giving platform. I felt the direction was pretty niche, so I went and interviewed. Overall the experience was pretty good, especially their coding question — it's one of the more interesting ones I've seen recently. The question they gave wasn't a traditional Leetcode problem, but an interac…

Technical Screen0
DatabricksSoftware EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Strong-Hire Feedback, Rejected at the Hiring Committee

I just got the update — rejected at HC. I really can't help venting about this: they set expectations so high and then tell you you got rejected at the hiring committee stage. I was interviewing for a senior fullstack role. Phone screen was mid-June — the classic high-frequency anagram LeetCode question. I finished in 20 minutes, wrote my own test, and as soon as it passed, that was it — call ove…

RejectedOnsite0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Phone Screen, Onsite, and Way Too Many Reference Checks

I interviewed in April, and only got around to writing this up today. Hope it helps. Phone screen: Coding: Contagion — basically the same as the version posted on the forum. Part 1: only an infected state, how long until everyone gets infected. Part 2: building on part 1, add an immune state. Part 3: after being infected, you become immune after D days — how long until it stabilizes. Part 4: add…

Onsite0
WhatnotSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Rejected After the First System Design Round

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
AmperitySoftware EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Two Phone Screens, Five Virtual Onsites, and a Company Going All-In on FDE

I don't think anyone's posted about this company here — it's probably too small to be on anyone's radar. The pay HR quoted wasn't great either. Phone Screen 1 Coding: given a width and height, draw a rectangle in ASCII, with different characters for the border and the interior. Second part: draw a series of rectangles on one canvas, and handle overlap plus rectangles that go outside the canvas. I…

Onsite0
OracleSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Five Onsite Rounds and BQ Overload

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In progressOnsiteXP0
Walmart LabsSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

A Sliding Window OA and a Backtracking Scheduling Problem

First round OA: LC coding + AI frontend/backend Sliding window / hash map problem, data scale up to 10^5, so it had to be an O(N) solution. Description: A class has many students, and each student has exactly one specific talent. There are talentsCount total types of talent, numbered from 1 to talentsCount. Now we need to form teams for a competition, and each team must include every type of tale…

Technical Screen0
MetaProduction Engineer
Apr 2026

Recruiter Screen, Two Coding Problems, and a Failed Outage Troubleshooting Round

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
GrammarlySoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

An Onsite Interviewer Who Kept Turning His Camera On and Off

Coding: Design an in-memory key-value store that supports set, set, count(value) (how many keys currently hold this value), begin, commit, and rollback. This interviewer would easily rank as one of the worst interviewers I've ever had. He didn't communicate with me at all the whole time. Here's how it went: he said he was turning his camera off and I should spend a few minutes reading the problem…

Onsite0
UberData ScientistNew Grad
Apr 2026

Two Rounds on Marketplace Experimentation, Then a Rejection

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
Zest AIData Scientist
Apr 2026

Eight Rounds, Then Ghosted by a Vanishing HR

Let me share the funniest interview experience I've had recently. I saw the posting online and applied on a whim. The recruiter emailed me to reach out. From start to finish there were 8 rounds total. Yes, 8, for a company this small. First was the hiring manager round: resume and machine learning concepts. Then a technical screen. The first question showed a graph where training, testing, and va…

No responseOnsite0
RobinhoodFrontend Engineer
Apr 2026

Three Onsite Rounds, Strong Self-Reviews, Still No Match

Three onsite rounds: Coding — Weekly Calendar Write a 7-day weekly calendar live, with columns as time (1-hour intervals) and rows as days. Clicking a cell pops up a dialog to create an event name. They give you a mockup. I wrote two pieces of state — a 2D grid and an events list — and did a transformation to derive the grid from the events. I felt like I wrote it so-so. The interviewer told me d…

RejectedOnsite0
NetflixSoftware EngineerSenior+
Apr 2026

Four Onsite Rounds on the Ads Team, Then Ghosted During a Freeze

Posting to share my interview experience with a different team on the Ads side, hoping it brings me some luck. It's been two weeks since I finished interviewing and I've been ghosted — no message at all from HR, so it's probably just gone into a black hole. First, I asked if I could interview for Staff, but HR firmly said no, telling me that an outside L6 is an L5 here, and that I'd have a chance…

No responseOnsite0
AppleSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

I Walked Out on a Rude HM Screen

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WithdrewTechnical ScreenXP0
ProfoundSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

A Recruiter Screen and an AI-Assisted Coding Exercise

This place is pretty interesting, they do AI marketing. It's kind of like doing SEO for AI's answers. There were two rounds. The first was with a recruiter, and after chatting for about 15 minutes they asked me to do a coding exercise, and I was allowed to use AI. The problem was roughly: they give you some API endpoints, with docs telling you what each API does, and in the end you pick a few of…

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