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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MicrosoftSoftware EngineerSenior+
Dec 2025

A Level 64 Offer That Still Fell Short

I've always just been a lurker here, never able to see anything useful. Since I'm interviewing right now, I figured I'd post this — hopefully it helps others too. Background: I work at Amazon (aka "the banana factory"), YOE 6+. WA. Let me give the result up front: I applied as senior and got a level 64 offer. After two rounds of negotiation, total comp went from 26 to 30 (215 base + 54/2 sign-on…

OfferOnsite0
DiscordSoftware EngineerSenior+
Dec 2025

A Data-Platform System Design Screen With No Feedback

If you get an interview with this team, first of all, congratulations, you're in for some bad luck. During the interview, the interviewer won't give you any feedback, and communication is pretty rough — I'd guess the interviewer himself hadn't really read the problem carefully. By the middle of the interview I had already implemented about half of a solution, but the interviewer eventually decide…

Technical Screen0
Otter.AiSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Rotting Oranges Plus a Meeting-Bot System Design

Coding round: Rotting Oranges System design Design a system: the user enters a video meeting link on a web page, the system assigns a bot from a Bot Pool, has the bot join the meeting, and continuously reports the bot's status back to the user. The meeting platform could be Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, etc. Existing components Both ends of the system already exist: Web UI user enter…

Onsite0
IMCSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Two OA Questions on Container Waste and Org-Chart Propagation

Two questions: Question 1: Waste Reduction A pharmaceutical company business scenario. The company prepares liquid medication for different patients, and the amount each patient needs varies. The medication has to be packaged into containers, and each "container set" offers bottles of different capacities. Given: the requirement amounts for multiple patients (requirements); and several container…

Online Assessment0
Two SigmaSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Rejected After One Technical Screen on a Huffman-Style Encoding Problem

11.9 – applied 11.12 – OA 11.24 – got the invite for the next round 12.1 – interview 12.3 – rejection letter The interviewer's English was really good, and he was patient and kept trying to guide me, but at the time I just couldn't understand why we needed to build a tree to encode things. It wasn't until later that it clicked — it's to get a unique binary representation, so that the most frequen…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
AmazonMachine Learning Engineer
Dec 2025

Phone Screen ML Deep-Dive Then a Five-Round Onsite

Phone Screen Part one was ML knowledge. The interviewer basically didn't ask about basic definitions — the whole thing revolved around digging into my project. From model selection to training details to evaluation, every answer just led to another follow-up. Typical questions included: how did you do evaluation for your model? Which metrics did you use? Why did you choose them? What are the math…

Onsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

My Best Behavioral Round Yet

Last week's BQ (behavioral questions) interview report — I posted the coding round separately on the forum too. The BQ round was scheduled separately. It was originally supposed to be combined with another round, but got rescheduled at the last minute, so there ended up being a week's gap between them. They didn't ask about my resume. Self-introduction, then the first question came smoothly: what…

Onsite0
Home DepotBusiness Analyst
Dec 2025

Manager Merged Two Rounds Into One

In late October I got an interview for an HD SBA role through a friend's referral, so let me share how it went (spoiler: I got rejected). Since I hadn't interviewed in a long time, but my friend's referral was really strong, the process moved super fast — a total of 10 days to get through 2 rounds of interviews (actually 3 rounds, since the hiring manager decided to merge round 2 and round 3). Ti…

RejectedOnsite0
xAISoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

HC Canceled the Night Before, Rerouted to a Rushed 15-Minute Coding Screen

I applied on a whim to a network-related infra role. A coordinator reached out afterward. They do have a recruiter, but I only got one on the line when I asked about salary and the RTO policy. No exaggeration: this company runs 60-hour weeks as the baseline, and 80-100 hours isn't a dream scenario, it's normal. Basically Palo Alto RTO5. Interview process Originally the network team's hiring manag…

Technical Screen0
AmazonApplied ScientistSenior+
Dec 2025

Passed the Tech Screen Despite an Unfinished Graph Question

An Amazon recruiter found me on a job site and had me apply for a senior applied scientist role. The recruiter met with me first and walked me through the general shape of the tech screen — ML breadth plus coding. ML Breadth. The interviewer was pretty nice. This part asked a lot of fundamental questions, like: 1) What is a p-value? 2) What is overfitting and underfitting, and how do you address…

In progressTechnical Screen0
MetaMachine Learning Engineer
Dec 2025

Onsite Loop Ends in a Downgrade Pass

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OfferOnsiteXP0
BloombergSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Simplified Grep, Friend-Request Math, and a BQ Round

Round 1: implement a simplified version of grep — find lines in a file containing a specific string, and also account for extensibility to flags. I just honestly clarified requirements first, then wrote the parsing plus the string matching. The focus of this problem isn't really the algorithm, it's whether you can write clean, extensible code. Round 2: given an array of ages, compute the total nu…

HR Screen0
Capital OneMachine Learning Engineer
Dec 2025

Four Rounds Including a Virtual Credit Card Case Study

There aren't many MLE interview reports for Capital One on the forum, so I'm writing up my own experience to give everyone a reference point. I'll try to be as specific as possible, hoping it helps other people interviewing for MLE later. There were 4 interviews total, each scheduled for 1 hour, as follows: Set A technical. The interviewer was pretty easygoing, and overall it went smoothly and pl…

In progressOnsite1
MetaSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Nailed Coding and System Design, Got Stuck in the AI-Coding Round

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RejectedOnsitePremium0
AppleMachine Learning EngineerNew Grad
Dec 2025

Two Tech Screens, No Feedback on the Reject

One day out of nowhere I got an email from an Apple recruiter about an open position. Since the opportunity was there, I figured I'd interview and see how it went. First round was directly with the hiring manager — we started by chatting through my resume. The team does RAG work, and it's basically an internal group that supports the hardware team as helpers. In the last 20 minutes, they opened u…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
ShopifyMachine Learning Engineer
Dec 2025

75-Minute Pair Programming Screen on a Robot Movement Problem

Recruiter The recruiter emailed asking if I was interested in the Shopify MLE position. We then set up a call — about ten-some minutes on video — and scheduled the actual interview (pair programming, 75 minutes) for ten days out. The recruiter's email included a guidance doc, but it didn't have much substantive content. It said I could use AI, and it linked the company's tech blog, which was most…

In progressTechnical Screen0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Coding and System Design in One Screen, Rejected After a Week

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Failed as a New Grad, Came Back for a Five-Round Onsite

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In progressOnsiteXP0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Two Phone Screens, Five-Round Onsite, No Offer

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
Jane StreetSoftware Engineer
Dec 2025

Onsite System Design on Orderbooks, Rejected Before the Coding Round

Real-time report from the London office. The OA and first-round phone interview are already covered elsewhere on the forum, so this is just filling in the details on R2 and the onsite. R2: a coding interview (sort trade) — this one's also up on Glassdoor. Compared to a typical algorithm question, the setup was closer to "how would you implement this feature in a trading system," testing your logi…

RejectedOnsite0

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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