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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DoorDashSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jul 2025

Full Loop in a Week, Rejected Over a Level Mismatch

A recruiter reached out on LinkedIn saying my background was a good fit, and after an HR call I moved into the interview process. The Phone Screen was an Easy coding question with a follow-up — string matching. After passing the Phone Screen, I had a 30-minute informal chat with the Hiring Manager, mostly about the team's business and my own work experience. After that, HR reached out to schedule…

RejectedOnsite0
AdobeSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Four Rounds, Team Shutdown, and a Month-Long Wait for Rejection

I finished interviewing right before they shut down the team at the end of last month. Then the HM took a two-week vacation, and after waiting almost a month, I got the classic "they were touched but rejected me anyway" treatment — moved to another candidate. It was for the AEP team, a referral pit from a friend. Four rounds total, overall not too hard. The first round was billed as tech/coding,…

RejectedOnsite0
NVIDIATechnical Marketing Engineer, AI Software
Jul 2025

PyTorch vs Jax, Then a Question About Bashing AMD

Onsite interview 1/4. The first interviewer, 45 minutes, first asked about my resume, then it was an AI technical interview, since the role is technical marketing for AI Software. The interview had three parts. Part 1: Deep Learning Fundamentals Q1: In Machine Learning, what are the high-level trends happening at the framework level? I answered with the evolution from numpy to PyTorch to Jax. He…

Onsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Crypto System Design, a Handwritten Iterator, and a Food Delivery Coding Round

Virtual onsite: System Design -> Pretty much the same as a version of this question that's been reported before. It's designing a crypto currency trading system, with a third-party exchange, using a sync API to interact with that third-party exchange. I had prepared something similar before. But the interview still had some stumbling — I felt my understanding was a bit off, and only figured it ou…

Onsite0
SalesforceSoftware Engineer II
Jul 2025

HM Screen, OA, and a GCP-Focused Final Round

A recruiter reached out in April and scheduled a video call to get a sense of my situation, and mentioned there would be a lot of openings coming up after that. In June I noticed a large number of Salesforce job postings, but the recruiter seemed to have forgotten about me, so I emailed to nudge them. Interviewing for SDE 2. First round: Hiring manager screening. Mainly asked about my background,…

Onsite0
PayPalData Scientist
Jul 2025

Three Back-to-Back Onsite Rounds and a SQL Standoff

Past experience, resume, explaining the role. Then they asked two case questions. Case 1: 3-level apartment plus 1 basement — find the best way to operate the elevator. Case 2: card risk — what will fraudsters do. Onsite: 3 rounds back-to-back. Risk/fraud scenario. Started off talking about my past experience, then the interviewer explained that this DS role isn't mainly about modeling. He gave m…

Onsite0
CoinbaseSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

System Design, Two Coding Rounds, and a PIP I Didn't Mention to the Recruiter

HR: Basically just chatted about my general situation. But I didn't tell the recruiter that I'm no longer at Amazon — over the last year and a half I wasn't very proactive at my previous company, and I didn't really listen to my manager, and I got PIP'd in May. (Should I be more upfront with the recruiter about this? If I actually get an offer, will the company find out during the background chec…

Onsite0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Two Technical Screens, Rejected After a Rushed Final Coding Round

Interviewed a couple months ago. First round was with a North America-based peer. They started off asking some common project questions - what the difficult parts were, how I solved them. Then one coding question, a variant of a LeetCode-style problem. They gave a string and a width. The first part was to split the whole string into lines of that width, and then append a suffix to each line sayin…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
MetaData Scientist
Jul 2025

A Verbal SQL Prompt That Threw Me Off

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

Technical ScreenXP0
MetaSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

A Level-Up Coding Screen Building a Bank System

There were four tests total, in a format similar to a design question, but they weren't given all at once — it was level-up style. You only get the next question once you pass the test cases for the current level. The whole time you're required to share your entire screen, with camera and mic on. I didn't manage to finish. I think the main difficulty was time management, and the fact that each ti…

Technical Screen0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Passing the 60-Question Behavioral Online Assessment

I did it the day before, and the next day I was told I passed. This one, maybe everybody passes. There were about 60 questions total. I can't say the specific questions, so I'll just give you the gist. The types were all about behavior — things like ethics, cooperation, work attitude, and so on. There were five levels total, from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. It says it takes about 30 minu…

Online Assessment0
HarveySoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

A File System Design Screen With a Confusing Interviewer

The file system question that's been going around the forum. Here's my report. Similar to a file system — implement two functions: addFile(String path): given a string like "path/to/somewhere/file.txt", store this file. getFile(String path): given "path/to/somewhere", return the content of file.txt; given "path/to", return the folder "somewhere". There wasn't much of a self-introduction, we jumpe…

In progressTechnical Screen0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

A GPU Credit Coding Question, Then a Surprise Fullstack Design Round

The coding round was the GPU credit problem, and it was actually pretty simple — the whole thing was only about 30-40 lines of code. add_credit subtract get_balance Three functions. I used two heaps to maintain the credit entities and the subtraction events. The first two functions were just simple heappush calls. get_balance was a little more complex — mainly because subtract needs to prioritize…

In progressOnsite0
OptiverQuantitative Researcher
Jul 2025

Six Rounds and a PhD-Shaming Final Call

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OnsitePremium0
BloombergSenior Software Engineer - Data EngineeringSenior+
Jul 2025

Recruiter Promised Easy-Medium, Got String-Heavy SQL and Rushed OOD Coding

I couldn't find much interview experience for this specific role online, so I'm contributing mine here. The role was Senior Software Engineer - Data Engineering. The interviewer wasn't very enthusiastic. 40 minutes, two questions — the first was SQL, the second felt more like an OOD (object-oriented design) question. The logic in the first SQL question wasn't actually that hard — what was hard wa…

Technical Screen0
TeslaMachine Learning Engineer
Jul 2025

Recruiter Changed the Format Without Notice

When I first got this role, the recruiter told me the technical interview would be 70 minutes long, covering Leetcode coding, LangChain, and MLflow. I prepared accordingly — I ground through a good number of Leetcode problems and specifically went and studied a lot of LangChain material. Then I got the official interview email, and the interview had turned into 45 minutes, with no details about t…

Technical Screen0
Wells FargoCredit Risk Modeler
Jul 2025

HR Screen, Technical Interview, 48-Hour Take-home Case Study, and Behavioral Fit

Position: Credit Risk Modeler (Associate Level) Location: Charlotte, NC (Hybrid) Rounds: HR Screening → Technical Interview → Case Study → Behavioral Fit Interview Process Recap ① HR Phone Screen (30min) Brief self-introduction, "Why Wells Fargo?" Confirmed my understanding of Credit Risk Modeling (PD/LGD/EAD basics). Asked one behavioral question: "Describe a time you worked with incomplete data…

Other0
AdyenSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

100% on the OA, Rejected After the Technical Round

There isn't much Adyen interview experience on the forum, so let me contribute mine. I'd never heard of Adyen and didn't even know they hire in the US — they have an office in Chicago and require onsite for a few days. Interview process: HR -> HackerRank OA -> Technical -> System Design -> Leadership -> Board The OA had two questions: the first was LRU, the second was similar to combination sum,…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
OptiverQuant Trader
Jul 2025

A 30-Minute Coin, Dice, and Poker Betting Game

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RejectedTechnical ScreenPremium0
SquarepointData Scientist
Jul 2025

Arrogant QR Grills Finance and Stats in Round Two

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In progressTechnical ScreenXP0

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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