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
Feb 2026

A VO with an AI Ad Creation Case Study

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OnsiteXP0
AxonSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Rejected After a Behavioral-Heavy Hiring Manager Screen

I applied on a whim through LinkedIn Jobs. The first round was an HM screen, mostly chit-chat and behavioral questions. It wasn't the hiring manager for the role I actually applied to, but the manager of a larger group — maybe our personalities just didn't click, because I got rejected. Here are the questions I remember: Why did you choose Axon? Walk me through your career path — what's driven yo…

RejectedOther0
NVIDIASoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Offer in Five Days, Five Back-to-Back Rounds

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OfferOnsiteXP0
DoorDashData Scientist
Feb 2026

Three Case Rounds, No A/B Testing Background

I'd seen a lot of phone screen reports for this role and passed it pretty easily, but the onsite was like the reports I'd read about — genuinely hard, and unlike anything I'd seen before. My background is as a DS who has always worked on modeling, with a little bit of product analytics experience mixed in. I don't have hands-on experience running A/B tests, so on the onsite, the experiment design…

Onsite0
AmazonApplied Scientist
Feb 2026

Two Onsite Rounds, No Coding, ML Breadth Sank Me

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
PinterestMachine Learning EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

70-Minute CodeSignal OA with Hand-Written Bagging and Naive Bayes

Based in Toronto. Looks like several teams were hiring at the same time, mostly on the search/ads/recommendations side. HR reached out on LinkedIn, and after I submitted my resume and cover letter they sent me an OA. 70 minutes, 10 questions, done on CodeSignal — 6 multiple choice, 1 coding question, and 2 ML engineering questions. The multiple choice questions were mostly ML fundamentals: the de…

Online Assessment1
MicrosoftApplied ScientistIntern
Feb 2026

Three Back-to-Back Virtual Onsites in One Day

Position: Applied Science: PhD Internship Opportunities - Redmond HR emailed to invite me to interview, no OA. VO1 (02/04): a 30 minute simple chat, talked about past projects, asked about some details. Then scheduled three back-to-back VOs on the same day (02/19), each 45 minutes, with a 15 minute break between adjacent interviews. VO2: an applied scientist, also asked about technical details of…

OfferOnsite0
AppleDesign Verification EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

Four SystemVerilog Rounds and a Fast Offer (Plus a Google DV Rejection)

Apple Timeline: 2/10 – Went to my school's Apple Intern Networking Event, chatted with the hiring manager for a bit, and got a same-day 30-minute interview that afternoon. 2/11 – HR reached out with a positive signal and scheduled three more rounds (back to back, though one got rescheduled). 2/16, 2/19 – Interviews. 2/24 – Followed up by email; HR said they were still syncing. 2/27 – Offer call.…

OfferTechnical Screen0
Capital OneSoftware EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

A Tetris-Style Grid Placement OA Question

There's an n x m grid of squares, and I need to draw a pattern on it. The pattern is made up of several fixed block shapes, kind of like Tetris. The problem gave 5 figure types: A, B, C, D, E. For A: in a 2x2 square, it only occupies the top-left, top-right, and bottom-left cells. So A is: That is, a U-shape / concave shape with the top-middle cell empty. This should go by the example matrix — fo…

Online Assessment0
GoogleData Scientist
Feb 2026

A Next-Word Predictor Coding Round Plus BQ

This round's interview question: given some training sentences, write two functions — a training function and a predictor function. The predictor function should take a word as input and output what the first word after that word could be. Example: ["I", "am", "Sam"] ["Sam", "I", "am"] ["I", "like", "green", "eggs", "and", "ham"] My approach: in the training function, use a dictionary to count ho…

HR Screen0
MetaSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Feb 2026

A Proctored OA Where 35 of 40 Questions Were About AI

VO on CodeSignal, camera on, screen shared. I had AI clean this up a bit — why has the polishing gotten so hard to use lately... it's not that it was hard, it's that the questions were long, with video explanations, so it took time just to understand them. New grad. HR reached out directly, and they want this filled very urgently — I need to get pushed to the final round within two weeks, and thi…

In progressOnline Assessment0
MetaMachine Learning Engineer
Feb 2026

Even Claude Opus Can't One-Shot the AI Coding Round

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Technical ScreenXP0
J.P. MorganSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Virtual Onsite Panel With Debug, System Design, and BQ Rounds

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OnsiteXP0
GoogleMachine Learning Engineer
Feb 2026

Two-Round Virtual Onsite, Rejected Over One Coding Question

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
AsanaSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Two Onsites, Rejected Over "Communication Clarity"

Round 1: Given two code snippets and asked what they do, plus their time/space complexity Jigsaw Puzzle design — the forum said pseudocode was fine, but the interviewer still made me pick a language and write actual code Round 2 (split across two days): Ascii Printer: 1 hour of coding (the last 45 minutes the interviewer asks questions about your code). A handful of functions to implement. A 10x6…

RejectedOnsite0
WaymoSite Reliability Engineer
Feb 2026

Rejected After a Rough, Disrespectful Technical Screen

I got rejected. This interview was for an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) role. The question was roughly this: there's a number line from 0 to 50. Points keep landing on the line, and each point contaminates the region 0.5 to its left and 0.5 to its right of where it lands — i.e., an interval of length 1. Once part of the line is contaminated, it stays contaminated forever. Points can land anywhe…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
DatabricksMachine Learning EngineerSenior+
Feb 2026

Cipher Intervals, Gradient Descent From Scratch, and a Harmful Content Design Round

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Smooth First Onsite, Easier Than Expected

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OnsiteXP0
UberData Scientist
Feb 2026

Rejected After a Round Full of Interruptions

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
InstacartData Scientist
Feb 2026

Product Sense, Experiment Design, and SQL in 45 Minutes

Overall the experience was good. The interviewer was very nice and the conversation flowed smoothly. In 45 minutes we covered product sense, experiment design, experiment analysis, and SQL. Question 1 How to investigate a metric decline. Pretty standard question. Seasonality, product changes, user segments, external competition — anything reasonable works. Question 2 If you were launching a new p…

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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