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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Shield AISoftware Engineer
Reported Nov 2025

Shield AI Software Engineer interview: third-round coding session

I made it to the third round, a coding interview, and things had been going well until then. The recruiter and hiring manager seemed genuinely interested and were open about the role. The direction felt clear early on, and their communication seemed transparent. The coding interview went off track. The interviewer arrived 25 minutes late, and the questions didn't seem well planned. When I asked f…

Technical Screen0
DuolingoSoftware Engineer
Reported Nov 2025

Duolingo Software Engineer interview with a one-hour technical round

Once I reached that stage, the process had a strong final-round feel. It followed a kind of superday structure, starting with an online assessment on a Zoom call and ending with a behavioral round that included a couple of STAR-style questions about my experience. The decisions felt quick and decisive. As I progressed, the rounds looked like a shortlist process for engineers and finalists. There…

Online Assessment0
Circle Internet FinancialSoftware Engineer
Reported Nov 2025

Circle Internet Financial Software Engineer: CodeSignal verification and timing problems

I went through several coding-gated processes where logistics, timing, or platform trust issues affected my candidacy. One take-home CodeSignal evaluation had four steps, and I completed most of it. CodeSignal invalidated the assessment because of suspected copying or screen-sharing behavior. After receiving an online assessment invitation in another process, I waited weeks to hear from a recruit…

RejectedTake-home Project0
Drw HoldingsSoftware Engineer
Reported Nov 2025

Drw Holdings Software Engineer interview with a 2.5-hour Codility assessment and superday

I went through an online assessment and technical sequence that moved quickly from testing to rejection, with very little positive feedback. The Codility OA was LeetCode-style. The technical interview covered algorithms and data structures, along with operating systems, networking, and system-design topics. In one version of the process, the final stage was a superday after the first technical ro…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
Drw HoldingsSoftware Engineer
Reported Nov 2025

Software Engineer interview at Drw Holdings: Python take-home and unanswered emails

I ran into communication gaps and long periods of silence during the take-home and scheduling steps. That made the experience frustrating, even though I completed everything. I first had a friendly HR conversation and then received a small Python coding or homework task. I submitted it and was expected to have a front-facing technical interview, but I never heard back. In another path, I agreed t…

RejectedHR Screen0
Drw HoldingsSoftware Engineer
Reported Nov 2025

Drw Holdings Software Engineer interview with a 45-minute C++ technical round

I ran into a C++-heavy interview loop where the main challenge was low-level correctness and syntax rather than just LeetCode-style problem solving. The process started with an assessment and then a short first interview. In a 45-minute C++ technical interview, I was tested on C++ knowledge and low-level details, with less emphasis on pure LeetCode. In a similar journey, I solved a LeetCode-like…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
DuolingoSoftware Engineer
Reported Nov 2025

Duolingo Software Engineer interview with CodeSignal and pair coding

The earliest stages were fairly smooth and lightweight compared with what I expected. I started with an online CodeSignal assessment, then had a short behavioral screen focused mainly on how I worked and handled team situations. In another run through the process, the coding assessment was also relatively manageable. It covered a subset of questions, including basic graph traversal and string or…

Online Assessment0
SmartsheetSoftware EngineerSenior+
Reported Nov 2025

Smartsheet Software Engineer interview: Roman-to-integer coding and outage-detector design

After the recruiter reached out through LinkedIn, the timeline was straightforward. I was scheduled for a coding round and a design round as part of the Senior Software Engineer process, and I completed them back-to-back. The recruiter arranged the calls and kept the scheduling moving. For coding, I solved a Roman-to-integer style problem. The design question was an outage detector modeled after…

OfferOther0
Drw HoldingsQuantitative Analyst
Reported Nov 2025

Drw Holdings Quantitative Analyst interview: probability, Fermi questions, and a market-making game

My process started with an online assessment and then moved to a video interview. The OA felt manageable compared with some of the harsher versions I'd heard about. It covered linear algebra and probability, and the live interview extended those topics into more traditional quant reasoning. The interview included expected value and basic probability questions, a few Fermi-style problems, and some…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Nov 2025

Right-Side View BFS, Then a Pure Behavioral Round

R1: Technical interview. The interviewer was a senior frontend engineer. We did a bit of small talk up front, then went straight to the coding link. Q1: Given a binary tree, output all the nodes visible from the right side. I used BFS — each round, take all the nodes at the current level, output the last one, then push all the nodes of the next level into the queue. Q2: Given two arrays arr1 and…

HR Screen0
AmazonSoftware EngineerIntern
Oct 2025

Two Back-to-Back VOs, an Extra-Interview Scare, and an Offer

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

OfferOnsiteXP0
InstacartSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

VO Split Into VO1/VO2, Karat AI-Coding Round

I got hit with Instacart's VO reform. The onsite is now split into two parts, VO1 and VO2 — if you fail VO1, there's no VO2, that's just it. VO1 has three rounds: First, the Karat round, which is AI coding. I hadn't used AI tools in a while so I wasn't used to it, and I only got through the fourth question before time ran out. The questions were: Given a codebase on a bus route simulation: How do…

Onsite0
MetaMachine Learning Engineer
Oct 2025

A Robot Room Cleaner API Variant

Meta recruiters often say they won't ask hard questions, but there are still interviewers who ask hard problems or hard variants. Robot Room Cleaner API variant. Recording the core approach and the easy-to-miss details here for anyone who needs it. Problem summary The map is unknown, boundaries are unknown You can only interact with the environment through the robot API: move() turnLeft() / turnR…

Onsite0
MetaSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

Full Loop After a Slow Screen, Rejected With No Feedback

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
BloombergSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

Phone Screen, Super Day, and EM Round to Offer

I've been reading everyone's interview reports here on the forum, so now that I've got an offer, I wanted to give back with my own. 11.12 — Phone Screen It was a question from a coding-practice site — I don't remember the specifics. Follow-up: if you keep inserting numbers that are bigger than the last one at the end, how do you update it? And what if you insert random numbers regardless of size,…

OfferOnsite0
MetaData Scientist
Oct 2025

AR, AE, SQL, and BQ Rounds

I interviewed for a Meta DSA onsite a while back and got the offer, so I want to write this down while I still remember it. My takeaway from the interview is that the real thing differs from interview reports in the details, so when you prepare you still need to keep your thinking flexible. Grasp the big picture, but don't just memorize answers. The interviewer wants a fairly quick response — bas…

OfferOnsite0
AmazonMachine Learning Engineer
Oct 2025

90 Minutes Covering System Design, RL, and a Graph-Cycle Coding Question

Basically felt like going into battle with my head already wrapped in bandages, wounded before I even started. It was originally scheduled for one hour, but it ended up running an hour and a half. The coverage was extremely comprehensive: 1) First, a self-introduction covering the projects I'd done, but with a bit of a science-breadth angle mixed in — this took 3-5 minutes. 2) Right after that ca…

Technical Screen0
TwitchSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

First-Ever Interview, Four-Round Onsite, No Offer

Full interview timeline: 9/28 — Mass-applied. 11/3 — Received an OA invite and an HR reach-out. 11/14 — HR phone screen, asked about my basic background and some BQ. 11/24 — Tech round. They gave a rock-paper-scissors game design question with two follow-ups — you got extra credit for handling win streaks and for breaking ties. Someone on this forum had shared this one before. Then some BQ, diggi…

RejectedOnsite0
AnthropicSoftware Engineer
Oct 2025

A Web Crawler Question Derailed by a Concurrency Stumble

Classic interview question: web crawler. You can also find this one on the usual practice-problem site. First single-threaded, then the follow-up was multi-threaded. Only need to consider pages under a single hostname. The extra piece compared to the practice-site version is that you need to handle the fragment — the #... part of the URL needs to be stripped. No need to worry about URL normalizat…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
UpstartData ScientistSenior+
Oct 2025

Two Interviews Years Apart, Same Clash With the Interviewer

I applied to this company years ago, right after graduation, and it felt like neither I nor the phone-screen interviewer were really into each other. Fast forward many years, and this time the HR screen and phone screen actually went well at first — but the virtual onsite took me right back to those days. I ran into another interviewer where, again, neither of us was really into the other. That s…

Onsite0

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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