Interview Experiences

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

Share yours, earn XP

4433 stories

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

LinkedInSoftware EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Five-Round Onsite, Timezone Curveball in System Design

LinkedIn onsite interview experience, giving back to the community here. Some background first: I'm an SDE3 with 5 years of experience. I'd been grinding coding problems for a while, but my system design prep was just so-so. The whole onsite was five rounds, one hour each: Round 1 was a project deep dive. I talked through two projects, and the interviewer kept the conversation pretty natural, dig…

In progressOnsite0
StubHubSoftware EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Rejected After Onsite With No Feedback

Coding round: Open discussion about how to improve the recommendation. System design Design an internal chat system for StubHub that also has the ability to send notification emails to customers who haven't logged in for 10 days. Result Two days later I got a notification from the recruiter that I'd failed both the coding and system design rounds. No detailed feedback. For the coding round, I fin…

RejectedOnsite0
MetaData Scientist
Feb 2026

Onsite Loop with SQL, Fake Accounts, and an AI Ad-Creation Metrics Question

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

In progressOnsiteXP0
PinterestSoftware EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Rejected After a Vague K8s Scheduling Tech Depth Round

Backend Infra The recruiter reached out to me. We chatted about my background, the company culture, that kind of thing. Remote work is allowed, the team does team-building events, and important meetings require you to be onsite. The second round was a chat with the hiring manager, mostly behavioral: am I currently employed, why do I want to leave. Then we went over my background, what I've done o…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
NuroSoftware EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

A Thread-Safe Video Player and a Symmetric-Points LeetCode

Only 1 round, which consisted of 2 interviews. The first was a coding system design question, and the second was a traditional LeetCode problem. Here is the first question: You're given a Frame class and a VideoPlayer class with the following operations: Read(): reads and returns the next frame of the video, or indicates that the end of the video has been reached. Render(frame): renders a frame o…

Technical Screen0
Data Analyst
Feb 2026

Excel-Then-SQL OA With the Real SQL Question

I went through pretty much every DA-related OA post on the forum and put together this note for my own review. I just finished an OA that felt about PDA level, and reviewing with my own notes really helped, so I'm sharing them here in case they help other people prepping. About the OA: I'd strongly recommend finishing the Excel questions before doing the SQL ones. For the Excel questions, don't p…

Online Assessment0
AmazonSoftware EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

Two Back-to-Back Rounds, BQ Plus OOD and a Course Schedule Twist

The Amazon intern interview was pretty classic. The two rounds were back to back, one hour each. The BQ part asked pretty classic stuff — mainly 3 common conflict scenarios, one dive deep, and one out-of-responsibility question, plus a relatively new question about using generative AI. There were quite a lot of follow-ups overall, but basically none of them were especially technical — my feeling…

Onsite0
AmazonApplied Science ManagerSenior+
Feb 2026

Passed the Phone Screen After Two Project Deep Dives and Heavy Leadership BQ

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

In progressTechnical ScreenPremium0
VoleonMachine Learning EngineerNew Grad
Feb 2026

Screen Plus Two Onsites Deep in Statistical Theory

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

OnsiteXP0
Home DepotBusiness Analyst
Feb 2026

Two Rounds Merged Into One 70-Minute Call, Rejected on the Case

In late October 2025 I got an interview for the Home Depot SBA role through a friend's referral, and I'm here to share my rejection report. Since I hadn't interviewed in a long time, and my friend's strong referral really helped, the process moved really fast — 10 days total to get through 2 rounds of interviews (actually 3 rounds, since the hiring manager decided to merge round 2 and round 3). T…

RejectedOnsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Two-Part OA with a WorkHoursRegister System Design Problem

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

Online AssessmentXP0
CursorSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Merkle Tree Diff Problem Run Inside a Real Repo

Just finished the interview, don't know the result yet, but I feel like I answered pretty mediocre. It really was the question that's already posted here — Merkle Tree — but the details still mattered a lot. It runs inside an actual repo, so you have to read files from the repo, which means you need to be familiar with the relevant standard library. The interviewer wanted the folder structure to…

In progressTechnical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Development Engineer (SDE) InternIntern
Feb 2026

Coaching a Mock VO With BQ, Morse Code, and a Word Break II Follow-up

Last week I ran a mock/practice VO (virtual onsite) session for someone prepping for their Amazon interview for the 2026 SDE intern role. It was BQ plus two coding questions. First, the BQ part: How do you handle it when you run into difficulties at work? When your team runs into difficulties, how do you motivate them and come up with a way to solve the problem? Why did you choose Amazon? Then th…

Onsite0
GrammarlySoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

An AI-Chat Spreadsheet Design Question and a Brutal 45-Minute Merge Problem

Overall people were pretty nice, and the recruiter was attentive — maybe the company just isn't that big yet and is still hiring. The bar for the questions didn't feel well calibrated, honestly a bit exaggerated. At this level, I think only people from the top, currently-hot AI star companies could really handle it. Why bother stressing over this one? Here are the two rounds of technical intervie…

RejectedOnsite0
Capital OneData Scientist
Feb 2026

A TV-Show Cancellation Case, Then a Power Day Invite 90 Minutes Later

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

In progressTechnical ScreenXP0
Capital OneMachine Learning Engineer
Feb 2026

Manager Round Ran Long After a Slow OA

This company is really annoying about it — you have to grind through an obnoxiously long OA before they'll even schedule the hiring manager interview. After I finished the OA, I actually had to remind the recruiter myself before they moved things forward. Let me talk about the manager interview. It was basically pure conversation. The manager seemed like a nice guy. He mostly asked what I'm curre…

Online Assessment0
StripeSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Full Loop to the HM Round, Then Rejected

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

RejectedOnsiteXP0
CourseraSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Failed a Multi-Round Instant-Runoff Voting Question

The question was roughly this: given a set of ballots, where each ballot is a candidate preference ranking, like [A, B, C, D] or [B, A, C, D], representing a voter's priority order over the candidates. Part one was actually pretty direct — just look at the first candidate on each ballot and count who appears most often. If there's a tie, pick the smallest one in lexicographic order. This part was…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
xAIMachine Learning Engineer
Feb 2026

Passed a 15-Minute Vibe-Check Call

xAI's 15-minute call. The interviewer started by introducing himself and giving a quick overview of the team. Then I introduced myself, talked about what I'm working on right now, and went deep into my project — walked him through the whole thing end to end. He asked about challenges and I answered that too. After all of that, he suddenly threw in a more basic question: what's the difference betw…

In progressTechnical Screen0
Capital OneSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Full OA Question Bank (Oct 2025–Jan 2026)

Given a target and an array, count how many elements are greater than the target and how many are less than it. If there are more greater elements, return greater; if there are more smaller elements, return smaller; if they're equal, return tie. Given an initial state, a season, and a day, return the moon state for that specific date. The moon's cycle is 8 days with 8 possible states, and the ini…

Online Assessment0

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