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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GoogleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Passed R1, Failed R2 on a Roof-Patching Puzzle

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
Jane StreetSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Feb 2026

A Stream-Transformer Coding Question from the Phone Screen

This is an old one — sharing a question from my campus recruiting interview back in the day. Given a set of M codes and N timestamps, the ideal shape for the data is an N x M matrix, where the rows are sorted by time and the columns are sorted by the code's lexicographic order. But not every code has data at every timestamp. You're given a stream of std::vector<std::tuple<int, std::string, int>>,…

Technical Screen0
SnapchatSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Five Onsite Rounds, Grilled Until Sweating

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OnsiteXP0
RipplingSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Designing a Rule Engine for Corporate Card Spend Limits

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Technical ScreenXP0
SalesforceSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Cleared Onsite But Offered MTS Instead of SMTS

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OfferOnsiteXP0
RobinhoodSoftware EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Passed the Tech Rounds, Failed the EM Round, Redid Team Match

I interviewed for Senior Software Engineer on the Competitor Insights team. I passed the technical rounds, but failed the EM round because I lacked frontend experience. The recruiter agreed to let me redo team match, so I talked to the Experimentation team as well. Round 1: Hiring Manager We covered the usual collaboration and communication questions, and I was also asked a lot of questions about…

Onsite0
OptiverSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

One OOD Problem and the Zap-N Reaction Games

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Online AssessmentPremium0
MetaSoftware EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Good Feedback, Then Rejected by Hiring Committee

Meta Sr SDE. Phone Screen LC: Si Jiu Ba (coded/obscured problem name; the original title was not stated) LC: Yi Er Jiu (same — coded form) Onsite Coding (scheduled after 4/16, seems like both rounds were AI Coding by then) LC: San San Jiu (coded form) LC: Yao Liu Wu Ling (coded form) — only the parent was given, pretty abstract; I ended up working it out with the interviewer on the whiteboard AI-…

RejectedOnsite0
Applied IntuitionSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Five Onsite Rounds, No Offer

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
AtlassianSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Rate Limiter Phone Screen, Then a Rejection

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
InterSystemsSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Feb 2026

OA, HR Screen, and a Three-Interview Onsite Day

I applied around early September 2025, and got the OA right away — not sure if it was automatic. The OA was strange, it had three parts, including SAT-math-style questions, I don't remember it too clearly. In October they scheduled an HR call, which just asked some basic information and confirmed my graduation date and things like that. Around mid-November they asked for my interview availability…

OfferOnsite0
MathWorksSoftware EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

Two Friendly Video Onsites, Offer Three Weeks Later

9/7 – Received the OA. I don't really remember the details anymore. 9/2 – Got notified it was the last day to do the OA, so I did it quickly. Three fairly simple questions, plus a recorded video interview (details shared earlier in this thread). 10/21 – HR reached out to schedule an interview. 11/7 – VO1. One question was the second question from the OA, plus a greedy problem. Aside from asking a…

OfferOnsite0
AtlassianFull Stack EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

20 Minutes of Coding, 15 Minutes of Design

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Technical ScreenXP0
NatooraData Analyst
Feb 2026

Grilled on ETL and LLM Claims After Admitting No Pricing Background

The interviewer cared a lot about how real and grounded the projects on my resume were, especially the logic behind the data flow (Data Infrastructure). If you have flashy words like LangChain or LLM on your resume, you need to be ready to get asked "why didn't you just use plain SQL/Python?" Interview Process Recap The interviewer first confirmed whether I had pricing experience — I said straigh…

Technical Screen0
SupioSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

One Hour Live-Debugging Their AI Chat Codebase

A personal injury law AI startup in Seattle. One hour of debugging. The interviewer emails you a source code repository, you run it locally yourself, and fix the issues. You need to be reasonably familiar with how to work with some AI APIs. It's a chat interface. Bug 1: the console showed "API key invalid." The cause: a wrong API key. Bug 2: after sending a request in the chat box, the response t…

Technical Screen0
IXL LearningDevOps EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Bait-and-Switched Into a Role I Didn't Prep For

I mass-applied online for a general backend position (3-5 YOE), and since I work in infra, HR set up a call saying they'd have me interview for an ops role — except the only opening was a Sr role requiring 7+ YOE. When I asked about the green card policy, HR was evasive and just said they could do it. After the call I checked the forum first, and it turned out you had to wait a full year after jo…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
MetaSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

An AI-Assisted Maze Solver Onsite

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OnsiteXP0
BloombergSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Two Campus Onsite Rounds and a Mystery Third Round

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In progressOnsiteXP0
Capital OneData Scientist
Feb 2026

A Streaming Show Case I Didn't Pass

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
AdobeSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Node.js and React OA, Failed Over a Sorting Gotcha

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RejectedOnline AssessmentXP0

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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