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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MetaData Scientist
Mar 2026

Same Forum-Famous Questions, Completely Different Numbers

SQL: Active Ads AR: Ads algorithm AE: Fake account Behavioral: Breakthrough project, disagreeing with someone, reporting to someone new to the team, how to make others feel welcome These are all old questions from the forum — really grateful to everyone who shared before me. Though it might be because they're old questions, the interviewer had changed them. The SQL one especially — same framework…

In progressOnsite0
MicrosoftMachine Learning Engineer
Mar 2026

A Cold 45-Minute Screen for the Excel Copilot Team, Then a Same-Day Rejection

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
LinkedInSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Six Rounds Promised, Five Delivered, After Weeks of Silence

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OfferOnsiteXP0
DoorDashData Scientist
Mar 2026

Three Onsite Cases All About A/B Testing I Wasn't Ready For

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OnsiteXP0
PinterestData Scientist
Mar 2026

Recruiter Conflict Splits a 5-Round Onsite Into Two Days

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In progressOnsiteXP0
Akuna CapitalSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Live Walkthrough and Refactor of My OA Solution

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Technical ScreenPremium0
UpstartSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Four OA Problems, Not Enough Time

Time was way too tight, the problems were super long and wrapped in scenarios, so I spent forever just reading through them. I didn't pass all the test cases on questions 3 and 4, so I definitely failed this one. Let me vent for a second too. I was job hunting around this same time last year, and it clearly feels way harder this year. Can people actually get all 4 of these problems bug-free withi…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
GoogleSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Mar 2026

BQ, ML Domain, and a Mahjong-Winning-Hand Coding Question

Timeline: 2025/12/23: HR reached out and asked me to send my latest transcript. 2026/01/05: Another HR emailed to set up a brief chat. 2026/01/14: HR chat — mainly asked about my research area and explained the interview format. They said it's basically one BQ round plus three coding rounds, or one BQ round plus one ML domain round plus two coding rounds, split into two big loops. I chose one BQ…

In progressOnsite0
NetflixSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Two BQ Rounds Left Me With No Signal

Just finished my interview. L5 SDE, Ads team, onsite. Coding: Not a LeetCode problem, but it's basically a Tree DFS problem underneath. Not too hard, but remember to write your own code and actually test it yourself. SD: Ad frequency cap — a classic. DM: Demand-side table. Also a classic — the usual set of tables: advertiser / campaign / ad group / ad. BQ1: Honestly I couldn't really tell what ki…

Onsite0
PalantirSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Graph Code Review, Dijkstra, and a Multithreaded System Monitor

This company isn't that hard — it's basically all repeat questions from previous write-ups on this forum. If you go through the compiled experiences here, you'll run into the exact same problems. Phone screen. Onsite 1 had three technical rounds. Each one also asked some behavioral questions and asked about the projects on my resume. Coding round: a stock question from this forum, exactly the sam…

Onsite0
XometryMachine Learning EngineerSenior+
Mar 2026

A Deploy-Under-200ms Deep Dive

Company: Xometry (March) Round: Round 1 Position: Lead ML Questions/format: 1) Walk through your background and your projects in detail 2) The DS team handed you a model — if you had to deploy it, the requirement is that a single inference call has to come in under 200ms 1) Key points for talking about project background Project goal: the business problem you're solving, and the evaluation metric…

Technical Screen0
AffirmSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Nailed the Coding Round, Rejected Anyway

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
GoogleForward Deployed Engineer
Mar 2026

Rejected on Paper, Then Called Back for a Compressed Two-Round Loop

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OnsitePremium0
DRWSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Mar 2026

A Greedy String-Parity Coding Problem

I ran into a greedy string problem. Given a string digits made up only of the characters '1' and '2', representing a positive integer, you can delete zero or more characters. After deleting, the requirements are: The remaining '1's must appear an even number of times. The remaining '2's must also appear an even number of times. Subject to those two conditions, the resulting integer should be as l…

Other0
BytedanceData ScientistNew Grad
Mar 2026

Four HackerRank OA Questions, Cleared in One Pass

TikTok (ByteDance) 2026 new-grad OA on HackerRank, four questions, cleared all of them in one pass. Q1: Given a string, ignoring case, count how many positions have s[i] != s[i+1]. Just walk through it once. Q2: Simulate addition — for each digit, add the digit's contribution directly into the answer. Straightforward simulation, that's all it takes. Q3: Given a 0/1 array, you need to support two…

Online Assessment0
IMCTraderNew Grad
Mar 2026

Reflex-Game OA Then a One-Take Video Screen

I applied online for IMC Amsterdam's graduate trader role in March, and right after I submitted the application it automatically sent me the first round OA. The first round was a 45-minute Neurolympics game — you can try a shorter demo version of the same kind of questions before the real thing, but the real test is longer. I did really badly on this round, both my speed and accuracy percentiles…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
NetflixData ScientistIntern
Mar 2026

A 75-Minute Causal Inference OA That Left Me Guessing

New here, and internships are so hard to find. This is the second OA I've gotten after countless mass applications, and long story short, it's been two weeks with no response so I'm assuming it's dead. The whole thing was about 75 minutes and had to be completed within a week. First there were two coding questions, and you could use Python or R — both coding questions were under the same setting.…

No responseOnline Assessment0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Phone Screen to Verbal Offer in 39 Days

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OfferOnsitePremium0
NatooraData Analyst
Mar 2026

Interviewer Cross-Examined Every Resume Buzzword

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Technical ScreenXP0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Distributed Node-Counting System Design Question

I've interviewed with OpenAI several times recently. This question gives you a root node and an initial API, sendAsyncMessage(nodeId, message). You need to implement receiveMessage(fromNodeId, message) yourself, and ultimately count how many nodes exist in the whole network. On the surface it looks a bit like DFS, but it's dressed up as a more realistic distributed scenario. Each node can be thou…

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.

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