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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CrestaSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

A Feature-Flag Evaluation Engine, Then Rejected After a ‘Great Chat’

I used Claude to help organize this write-up. The interviewer kept saying he really enjoyed our conversation, and then rejected me anyway. Problem background: you're given three JSON files and asked to implement a feature-flag evaluation engine that maps every user to a final boolean value (on/off) for every flag. Input files: flags.json — definitions for 7 flags user.json — 10,000 users expected…

RejectedOnsite0
AirtableSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jul 2026

Undo/Redo Design Round Plus a HyperAgent Take-Home

I was picked by the recruiter for the product omni team, working on Airtable's vibe coding agent. Airtable recently acquired DeepSky to build HyperAgent, and there are plans to connect it with Airtable itself, so it's basically multi-agent development (HyperAgent -> Omni). Recruiter call - 30 minutes, phone screen: why Airtable, what project I wanted to work on, my relevant past experience. Codin…

Onsite0
GoogleSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Referral, Team-Specific Loop and a Visible-People Array Problem

Google's process looks like it has changed. I got a referral and interviewed for a specific team. The interview process was broken into 2 rounds: Round 1 a standard Leetcode problem on a text editor that doesn't compile behavioral Round 2 solutions design (similar to system design, but less ambiguous) a Leetcode problem The question I got in round 1 had two parts. Part 1: Given an array of height…

Technical Screen0
RipplingSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Onsite AI Coding Round with Live Prompting

Recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn. They scheduled a phone screen first — system design, on a news aggregation system. The interviewer was very nice. A week later they told me I'd passed. Then they scheduled a chat with the hiring manager about my project. A week later they told me I'd passed that one too. Onsite was two days, three rounds. System design: they asked me to design a hotel syst…

Onsite0
Bilt RewardsSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Codespace-Based, No LeetCode, AI-Assisted Design Task

A recruiter reached out and went straight to scheduling a technical interview. Their interview process was pretty confusing — they used a GitHub Codespace, zero LeetCode, and it was split into two main parts. Part one: fix failing unit tests. The project was structured similarly to a Spring MVC app, and it also tested SQL. I had to fix a few SQL queries and write the logic for determining reward…

Technical Screen0
FigmaSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Rejected 2 Days After a 5-Round Virtual Onsite

After the recruiter call, the first round was HM + coding. The VO (final onsite) was 5 rounds — coding + 2 system design rounds + behavioral + a project deep dive. I hadn't seen the AI-flavored system design round anywhere else before. The VO was spread across 3 days, and I got rejected 2 business days after that. The HM round asked about past projects, not much technical. The first coding round…

RejectedOnsite0
Capital OneAI Engineer
Jul 2026

New OA With Four Questions, One I Only Half-Solved

One hour and ten minutes, four questions in total. Question 1 Very simple — take a string and reorder it by first character, last character, second character, second-to-last character, and so on. Input: abcde Output: aebdc Question 2 Also simple — a string made up only of W, D, L characters. Sort the whole thing so the output repeats in W, D, L order. Input: WWWLLDDLD Output: WDLWDLWDL Input: WLD…

Online Assessment0
GoogleSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jul 2026

Conflicting Spreadsheet Instructions and a Stressful Onsite

I interviewed for Applied AI. I don't know why a senior-level interview had only two coding rounds and one system-design round. Questions: Coding 1: Spreadsheet, implementing set_cell / get_cell. Coding 2: Google Shop System design: A customer-service system where users talk to a virtual agent and can escalate to a human. The recruiter's feedback was that, of the three rounds, Coding 1 and system…

RejectedOnsite0
Ai2Software EngineerSenior+
Jul 2026

A Streaming Step-Hierarchy Design Problem

The question gives a set of StepProgressEvents, where each event contains: The same step_id can receive multiple updates — for example first running, then later done — and events can also arrive out of order. Each step can have child steps, and in the end you need to maintain and output the current latest step hierarchy, for example: Also, after the initial batch of events is processed, the syste…

Technical Screen0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

A 90-Minute OA With a 4-Level Working Hours Register Problem

Time limit was 90 minutes, four levels total. Implement a Working Hours Register: employees badge in and out of the office, and the system records their working hours, with support for promotions, salary calculation, and bonus-period management. Level 1: Basic CRUD — add an employee, badge an employee in and out, query an employee's total hours worked. Level 2: Sort employees by hours worked and…

Online Assessment0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Phone, Virtual Onsite, and a Silent Extra Round

Sharing my recent interview experience, hopefully it helps folks interviewing later avoid the same landmine. Phone Screen: Coding: Design a social media feed, Part 1 and Part 2. I didn't fully finish it, but I talked through my remaining approach. System Design: Sora. The interviewer pressed on some details, including why I chose AWS SQS and how to handle various failure cases. Virtual Onsite: BQ…

RejectedOnsite0
PinduoduoSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Temu Phone Screens with Spiral Matrix and Sliding Window, Rejected

Sharing my Temu interview experience. First phone screen round (coding): The problem was printing a 2D matrix in spiral order. Part one: given an m x n matrix, print all the values in a spiral (clockwise, from the outside in). Follow-up: the matrix has blockers, and whenever you hit a blocker you turn clockwise (turn right). What is the output order? Second round: Coding problem: given a string,…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Rejected After the Recruiter Call, Before Any Technical Round

I was pretty surprised. I never expected to fail at this round. A friend referred me. The role is not in the AI area, and it matches my current job by more than 80%. When I scheduled the call with the recruiter, I asked if there was anything I needed to prepare. The recruiter said no preparation was needed, so I assumed it would be a very casual chat to get to know my basic info. These are the qu…

RejectedHR Screen0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

A Down-to-the-Wire Coding Round and “Design ChatGPT”

These were all questions I'd already seen before, and I still feel like I did so poorly — why can't I even execute cleanly on questions I already know... The coding round was GPU Credits II. I asked the interviewer a few clarifying questions, but he kept telling me to just go look for the answer myself in the test cases. I explained a brute-force approach, and the interviewer said he didn't fully…

Onsite0
OpenAISoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Two Onsite Rounds, Same Day, Coding and System Design

I had two rounds back to back on the same day, each about 60 minutes. The interviewer was about 5 minutes late both times. The coding round interviewer was really nice, but the second round felt a lot more serious. Overall the experience was fine. I got the rejection letter the next day. The coding round was a multipart social graph + snapshot problem. The first question was the same as H2H. The…

RejectedOnsite0
DecagonSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

Shopping Cart Versioning, Then Rejected on Tic-Tac-Toe

Round 1 was the shopping cart problem that other interview reports have also mentioned, but part 2 seemed a bit different. You're building a shopping cart for a cooking app. Users can add recipes to their cart. Each recipe has a list of ingredients (e.g., Chicken, Garlic). When the same ingredient appears across multiple recipes, the total count qualifies for bulk discounts. Part 1 was the same a…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
GoogleSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jul 2026

Two Onsite Rounds, Team Matching in Progress

Round 1 Coding (45 min): Job Processing Schedule with priority. Higher-priority jobs get processed first. Asked to implement a class with two APIs, addJob and getJob. Follow-up: add a delay to each job — for example, after job A is processed, it can't be processed again until at least 3 getJob API invocations have happened. BQ (45 min): Standard behavioral questions — the biggest challenge I ran…

In progressOnsite0
AirbnbSoftware Engineer
Jul 2026

90-Minute Online Assessment, Four-Level Bank Transfer Problem

I just finished the Airbnb online assessment. I'm an experienced hire switching jobs, not a new grad. The problem is like transferring money between bank accounts, split into four levels, 90 minutes total. It's the same one that was in earlier interview reports on the forum. Level 1 is implementing create and add credit. Level 2 is instant transfer, and outputting the top k. Level 3 is being able…

Online Assessment0
OpenAISoftware EngineerSenior+
Jul 2026

Recruiter Screen With Zero Technical Questions

Got pulled in by a recruiter on LinkedIn, scheduled a 30-minute recruiter call. Writing this down right after while it's still fresh. Bottom line: it was pretty light, zero technical questions. Basically I gave my self-intro, and then she asked one question per experience on my resume without digging deep — felt like she was just confirming what's on the resume is real. Then she asked why I want…

In progressHR Screen0
OpendoorBackend Engineer
Jul 2026

Three Surprise Technical Rounds After HR Went Dark

The first round was with a tech lead, and it was the only round with a good experience. It wasn't a traditional behavioral round — it was pretty relaxed, just getting a feel for work style and company culture. Right after the tech lead round I was immediately moved forward, and then HR vanished for a week. I emailed the tech lead to ask what was going on, and that's how I found out the original H…

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.

Share your experience to earn XP