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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CrusoeSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

In-Person Onsite with a PPT Deep Dive

Phone screen (Coding) Question: Print a binary tree, using * to represent missing nodes. Leaf nodes need to be separated by one space, and then going up, each parent node should be placed in the middle position between its child nodes. Onsite System Design: Design Slack Coding: Similar to a LeetCode problem (they scrambled the name to dodge the forum filter), except the input is one long string i…

OfferOnsite0
SnowflakeSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Two Virtual Onsite Coding Rounds With a CEO-Themed Query Problem

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In progressOnsiteXP0
AmazonSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Jan 2026

Three Rounds Back to Back, from Behavioral to System Design

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OnsiteXP0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

OA, Three Codings, and a Karat AI Round That Went Sideways

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
MetaSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Failed the AI-Enabled Coding Round, Got the Offer Anyway

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OfferOnsiteXP0
AppleAnalytics Engineer
Dec 2025

Two Technical Rounds, Rejected Despite Glowing Feedback

Apple Maps - Metrics Engineering team I'd honestly never heard of this role before. I looked up a lot of information about it, and it feels kind of like a Data Engineer role with an Analytics focus — designing data pipelines for various Apple Maps features, and designing metrics to measure the app's performance. A recruiter reached out to me, and I went into the interview with a "why not, let's s…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
GoogleData Scientist
Dec 2025

Bootstrap Proofs, Then a Soccer Shot Model and a Selection-Bias Puzzle

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Technical ScreenXP0
Jane StreetMachine Learning Engineer
Dec 2025

Passed the Coding Screen, Failed the ML System Round

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RejectedTechnical ScreenPremium0
LinkedInSoftware EngineerSenior+
Dec 2025

Live Coding Plus an AI Pair-Programming Round

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OnsiteXP0
UberSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

A Graph Question in a Frontend HackerRank Screen

At first it was the usual back-and-forth introductions. The code was written on HackerRank, and the moment I heard the question I broke out in a sweat — since when does a frontend interview ask a graph question? Simply put, it was a flight ticket problem. Input: number of cities, [[departure city number, arrival city number, ticket price]...], and the maximum number of stops. Output: the lowest t…

Technical Screen0
CitadelSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

HackerRank OA, Two Coding Problems in 75 Minutes

I did this OA on the HackerRank platform. Two questions, 75 minutes. Q2: You're given n employees' office hours as intervals [startTime[i], endTime[i]]. You need to build a team that includes at least one "core employee" whose working hours overlap with every other member's working hours. Find the maximum number of employees the team can include. For example: Input: startTime = [2, 5, 6, 8], endT…

Online Assessment0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

A Coding-Heavy OA on the Cloud Storage Problem

I just finished Coinbase's OA. Overall I felt the problems weren't that hard, but there was a huge amount of code to write. If you hadn't prepared for it ahead of time, I don't think a normal person could finish the whole thing on first sight. This kind of test is honestly ridiculous, damn it — it really feels like they're just hunting for code monkeys. The problem was the cloud_storage one that'…

Online Assessment0
CohereSenior+
Dec 2025

Used Claude Code on the Live Coding Round, Rejected for 'Lacking Implementation Skills'

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
ShopifySoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Pair Programming a Mars Rover with Claude Code

The interviewer had a heavy French accent, so I had to turn on the Google Meet transcript. After introductions, the interviewer handed me a GitHub repo that was completely empty. The requirement was given verbally: build an app to control a Mars rover — the rover starts at (0, 0) facing north; it supports commands to turn left/right and move; and it should report direction and position after ever…

Technical Screen0
MetaSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Dec 2025

Three Coding Rounds, One BQ, and an Offer

I am sharing my experience interviewing for Meta's 2025 new graduate role last year. Interview experience The interviews did not feel easy. Other people's Meta loops seemed to get two medium tagged problems and generous grading, but every one of my rounds felt difficult. The first round tested a disconnected graph. In the second round, I had 35 minutes to explain and write one hard and two medium…

OfferOnsite0
Data Scientist
Dec 2025

a SQL Question and a Rushed Pricing Case Study Sank My Screen

Officially kicked off my first technical phone screen of this job-hunting season. It's with an AI video creation company based in New York — funny enough, it shares a name with a legendary NYC clubbing spot from back in the day lol. Clearly I hadn't grinded enough problems, because the SQL question left me scratching my head the whole time. Definitely failed — I could see the interviewer's face p…

Technical Screen0
AirbnbSoftware EngineerSenior+
Dec 2025

Passed Every Round, Then the Role Was Filled

Background: US bachelor's degree, 4.5 years of experience. Timeline Mid-October: mass-applied on LinkedIn to Airbnb Beijing (the "air mattress" company) — got a recruiter email the same day. A week later: 15-minute HR Screen introducing the role. Late October: 45-minute Tech Screen. Early November: VO1 (Coding 1) and VO2 (Coding 2), 45 minutes each. > Suggest a split stay where you stay at 2 diff…

RejectedOnsite0
StripeSoftware EngineerIntern
Dec 2025

Invoice Matching Screen, a Bikemap Integration VO, and an SF Offer

I got the internship last year. Since my timeline was pretty late, I decided to share it with everyone this year instead. Hope it helps anyone who's in the process right now. 12/1/2025 OA 12/2 phone screen invite 12/8 team screen, the payment invoice question. "Part 1 is matching by invoice id; pay attention to handling the case where there's no match. Part 2 builds on part 1 and adds amount matc…

OfferOnsite0
InstacartData ScientistSenior+
Dec 2025

Five Questions on Product Sense, Experiment Design, and SQL

Overall the experience was good. The interviewer was very nice, and communication was smooth. The 45 minutes 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 — as long as it's reasonable, that's fine. Question 2 If you want to launch a…

Technical Screen0
NVIDIASoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Phone Screen on a High-Performance String Class

NV phone screen I was asked to implement a high-performance class to handle large strings, with functions like cmp, cat, substr, and so on. I created a simple class that uses a char array to store short strings. First I was asked to write the constructor: Q: For strncpy(buf, s, len), characters get copied one at a time — how can this be sped up? A: Use memcpy. Q: Is that the same as strncpy? A: ?…

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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