Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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4437 stories

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AnthropicSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

A Two-Part Phone Screen and a DIY Attention Algorithm on the Virtual Onsite

A premium story — unlock it to read the full loop.

RejectedOnsitePremium0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Two OA Questions, No Hidden Test Cases

I finally got my Google OA, and I'm posting here right after finishing it. This OA had 2 questions total, 90 minutes, which keeps Google's usual style. Both questions were not too difficult overall. Problem 1 (paraphrased) You have a one-dimensional board, and each cell can be in one of three states: empty, a piece, or a coin. On each turn, you can choose any piece and move it 3 cells to the righ…

In progressOnline Assessment0
LinkedInData Scientist
Sep 2025

A Technical Screen Packed with Stats Questions

No guarantee the answers here are correct, just for reference! LinkedIn Stats One bank has 5 tellers and a single line, another bank has 5 tellers with 5 separate lines — which one would you queue at? Simple statistical explanation: the "Long Plank Effect" (the opposite of the Weakest Link Effect). In a single queue, your waiting time is determined by the fastest available teller. In multiple que…

Technical Screen0
DiscordSoftware Engineer
Reported Sep 2025

Discord Software Engineer interview with socket and chat server coding

I went through an uneven Discord process. The technical experience felt rushed, poorly explained, or overly constrained, and it didn't end in an offer. The recruiter and hiring manager lead-in was relatively smooth in tone, although expectations weren't always communicated well. In the technical screen and live coding round, I worked on socket or chat server style problems under time pressure, wi…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
BrexSoftware Engineer
Reported Sep 2025

Brex Software Engineer 50-minute React filter challenge

My process centered on a single coding challenge with a very specific setup. I had to build a filter with toggles using data from a JSON file. The task involved React, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and the 50-minute time limit made it feel tight to finish. The challenge was tricky because the UI behavior had to be correct while I wired everything quickly enough to reach a working state before time r…

Technical Screen0
BairesDevSoftware Engineer
Reported Sep 2025

BairesDev Software Engineer interview: exam submission error and unfinished tasks

My process started promisingly, but I didn't finish everything. I ran into technical problems during the exams, and when I tried to submit what I had completed, the system marked it as an error in the console. I also lost time because of distractions and couldn't complete the remaining activities. Because I couldn't get past the submission issue or finish the full set of tasks, I didn't reach the…

Online Assessment0
Clipboard HealthSoftware Engineer
Reported Sep 2025

Clipboard Health Software Engineer interview with a timed technical PR assessment

I went through a mostly take-home and async process, and I never really spoke with engineers. The evaluation felt opaque. First, I received emails with a repo-linked task and had roughly an hour to complete it, without any direct interaction with the company. In another step, I was given a GitHub repo and a repo or PR-style task. The focus was on the backend or frontend depending on the role, and…

RejectedTake-home Project0
TwitchSoftware Engineer
Reported Sep 2025

Twitch Software Engineer interview with a 45-minute hiring manager technical round

I interviewed for a Software Engineer role at Twitch. The process followed a typical assessment, then hiring manager flow: recruiter outreach, a CodeSignal assessment, and a short technical interview. The recruiter explained the role and contacted me to start the process. I completed the CodeSignal assessment, waited a few days, and then had a 45-minute technical interview with the hiring manager…

Online Assessment0
TrexquantSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Strong Onsite Undone by a Brutal CEO Call

This is a niche quant firm. I interviewed for the software engineer role, which required strong C++ — after this point, all the coding rounds were C++ only. Recruiter chat: besides the usual questions, they threw in some C++ trivia on the spot, things like what default constructors a class can have. PM chat: I talked with their Lead PM, a very sharp guy. He mostly asked about my resume, and a lot…

RejectedOnsite0
Deutsche BankSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Two LeetCode Easy Rounds, Then a BQ Round That Was Really a Technical Interview

This is from an interview I had two months ago. The first two technical rounds were each 1 hour, with 2 interviewers per round, and both interviewers asked questions. Each round had one question, both original LeetCode Easy problems — one was checking whether two trees are the same, the other was valid parentheses. Then you had to write test cases. Probably because I was using Java, the interview…

RejectedOnsite0
AppleData Scientist
Aug 2025

Four Onsite Rounds, No Offer

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

RejectedOnsiteXP0
MetaData ScientistSenior+
Aug 2025

45-Minute SQL and A/B Test Screen for L5 Product Analytics

I've been a statistician for two years, and now I'm trying out DS or quant. In late August, Meta's HR reached out to me for an L5 Product Analytics DS interview. After the HR screen, the first technical round was 45 minutes, with 1 SQL question and 1 product question. The setup: an advertiser has a shop on FB and also has their own website. After FB serves a user an ad, they look at whether the c…

Technical Screen0
StripeSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Passport Validation Form Coding Exercise

This problem is basically a passport number validation form. You're given an object that looks something like this: Where L means letters only, D means digits only, and A means alphanumeric (letters or digits). Part 1 – Create a layout. Add a selector with the countries (from the object) as options; add a passport number input field; add a validate button. Part 2 – Create a validate function that…

Technical Screen0
MetaSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Nearest-Duplicate-Within-K, Then a DFS Question I Didn't Finish

The first question was to find the nearest matching numbers in an array, where the index distance needs to be within k. Honestly a pretty simple question — basically just use a map to store value-to-index, then do one pass through the array. The follow-up was how to improve the space complexity. My first thought was that I'd need to clear out the earlier entries in the map, so she had me write th…

Technical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Three Onsite Rounds of BQ, Coding, and OOD

Round 1: Asked 6 behavioral questions, covering a pretty wide range. The ones I remember are: How to handle a tight deadline Proactively helping others (help others) Digging into a problem's root cause (deep dive) How to handle disagreeing with a colleague (conflict with colleague) Doing something outside your scope (outside your scope) How to respond to negative/harsh feedback Round 2: Two codin…

Onsite0
ShopifyMachine Learning Engineer
Aug 2025

Pair Programming Onsite, Rejected for No Unit Tests

The interview was 75 minutes, and you need to have your own coding environment set up ahead of time. The interview question is on GitHub — after cloning it, you write the code locally, then push it back up to GitHub. The problem wasn't very hard, it's basically simple OOP — write a class that implements a feature you can interact with from the command line, it doesn't really involve designing dat…

RejectedOnsite0
OptiverSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

A Brutal Four-Section OA With Coding, Pattern-Finding, and Probability

I think their OA basically gets sent out to everyone — I got mine right after I applied. There are four sections and the intensity is pretty high. The email doesn't mention this, but you can actually do them separately, so I'd suggest doing one section per day. Coding The coding section lets you go back to earlier questions, so if you don't know how to solve one, I'd suggest skipping it first. 90…

Online Assessment0
OptiverSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Breaking Down the Four-Part OA

The Optiver OA is honestly pretty hard. This part is 2 medium-difficulty coding problems plus 1 approximate-solution problem, all in 90 minutes. The problem types lean toward DP (dynamic programming) and heap (priority queue) style problems — testing mathematical modeling, data structure simulation, strategy backtesting, and statistical analysis skills. Approach: before starting a problem, quickl…

Online Assessment0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

A 45-Minute Phone Screen Building a URL Shortener

Sharing my backend phone screen with Coinbase. The process was a recruiter call, then the phone screen got scheduled about a week later, 45 minutes long. The question was to build the core logic of a URL shortener service, with the following requirements: Support generating short links Support automatically redirecting when a short link is visited Short links need an expiration time Concurrent ac…

In progressTechnical Screen0
ZipHQSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Aced the HM Round, Failed a Simple Tree DP Problem

Overall the difficulty was pretty easy — too bad I failed this tech round. Tech round: a tree problem. Each node has a value. For each node, you can pick either the current node's value, or the values of its children. If you pick the current node, you can't also pick its children — return the maximum value sum. The core of it is really just getValue(root): return max(getValue(root), getVal(root.c…

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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