Interview experiences

Amazon · SDE I (New Grad, MS CS)Offer

A master's new grad went through Amazon's full three-part online assessment and three 45-minute virtual interviews. Every round opened with Leadership Principles questions before the coding began, and the offer landed within five business days.

Interviewed October 2019 · Seattle, WA, US

Amazon · SDE I (New Grad)Offer

A fresher found the posting through a LinkedIn connection, cleared the OA within a week of applying, and faced a six-hour virtual onsite: four one-hour rounds where every behavioral answer drew three to four follow-up questions.

Interviewed January 2021 · Seattle, WA, US

Google · L3 Software EngineerOffer

A candidate with two years of experience went from recruiter outreach to offer over about four months. The onsite was four 45-minute coding rounds — three of them featuring binary trees — and one round turned into a 25-minute chain of follow-ups about approximating an optimal solution at scale.

Interviewed June 2020 · Bangalore, IN

Google · L4 Software EngineerNo offer

An L4 Software Engineer candidate went through two phone screens, three onsite rounds, a culture conversation, and a team-matching call with a Google hiring manager, then watched the process stall for about a month and a half over a tightened experience requirement before an added extended round ended without an offer.

Interviewed February 2024 · Not specified

Google · L5 Software EngineerNo offer

A candidate interviewing for an L5 role went through a phone screening, three onsite coding rounds, a mobile system design round, and a Googleyness and Leadership round. Two of the four technical rounds went poorly by the candidate's own assessment, and after roughly two months of silence the recruiter reported that the role had been closed.

Interviewed January 2023 · Not specified

Google · L3 Software EngineerNo offer

A second-attempt candidate cleared Google's phone screen and moved to a four-round technical onsite plus a behavioral round in Seattle. Rounds covered binary search, tree traversal, a trie-based word game, and grid BFS; the candidate identified the first onsite round, a binary-search counting problem, as the likely reason the loop ended without an offer.

Interviewed September 2019 · Seattle, WA

Google · Backend Software EngineerNo offer

A rejected Google Backend Engineer candidate in Bangalore recounts a recruiter screen, a gating elimination round, and a three-round onsite loop covering trees, tries, scheduling, and graph problems.

Interviewed April 2021 · Bangalore, India

Amazon · SDE INo offer

A LinkedIn referral bypassed Amazon's usual online assessment for this SDE I candidate, who then worked through a telephonic DSA screen and two technical rounds pairing coding problems with Amazon Leadership Principles questions before receiving no further response.

Interviewed March 2022 · Not specified

Amazon · SDE IOffer

A 2024-batch candidate with prior internship and full-time experience cleared Amazon's SDE I loop in Bangalore across an OA, two technical rounds, and a Bar Raiser, receiving an offer about a month after the process began in late November 2024.

Interviewed December 2024 · Bangalore

A candidate interviewed for a Staff Software Engineer role at LinkedIn's Sunnyvale office, going through two phone interviews and a six-round onsite loop that mixed leadership and craftsmanship questions with coding and system design problems. After the hiring committee decided the candidate was not a match for the Staff level, the candidate returned for a shorter, two-round onsite loop evaluated at the Senior Software Engineer level, which also ended without an offer.

Interviewed July 2018 · Sunnyvale, CA

A new-grad candidate interviewed for an Entry Level Software Engineer role at Bloomberg's London office, moving through a phone screen and a video interview built around resume questions and coding problems, then an onsite day covering two technical rounds, an HR conversation, and informal time with the interviewer group; the write-up does not state a final decision.

Interviewed April 2018 · London

A Senior Software Engineer candidate applied to Bloomberg's London office through the company's careers site and, after an initial screen, went through five separate on-site conversations covering coding, system design, a recruiter chat, and a hiring-manager round, ultimately accepting an offer.

Interviewed October 2022 · London, United Kingdom

A candidate with an MSCS and about a year of industry experience walked through a recruiter-sourced Apple SDE (ICT3) loop in Cupertino: a take-home coding assignment, a phone screen, and a four-round onsite day, ending in an offer.

Interviewed August 2019 · Cupertino, CA

A referred candidate's account of an E5 interview loop at Facebook, moving from a recruiter screen through a technical phone screen and a four-part virtual onsite to an accepted offer with a higher total compensation package.

Interviewed February 2021 · Bay Area

Amazon · SDE I (New Grad)Offer

A new-grad candidate with an MS in Computer Science walks through Amazon's SDE I hiring process: three online assessments (debugging, algorithms, work-style/logical reasoning), three same-day virtual interviews mixing leadership-principles questions with coding problems, and an offer that arrived about a week later.

Interviewed May 2022 · Seattle, WA / California / India (locations as listed in the source)

Google · L3 Software EngineerOffer

A candidate describes an accelerated, referral-adjacent path to a Google L3 Software Engineer offer in Bangalore: a phone screen, five virtual onsite interviews, hiring-manager calls, and reflections on how they prepared.

Interviewed August 2020 · Bangalore, India

Amazon · SDE IOffer

A 2-YOE engineer's account of Amazon's SDE-1 hiring process in Hyderabad: an online assessment, two technical interviews, a hiring manager round, and a bar raiser round, ending in an offer.

Interviewed October 2020 · Hyderabad

A New York-based Software Engineer candidate went through a technical phone screen followed by a four-round onsite loop at Uber, covering data structures, a whiteboard coding problem, a behavioral round, a system design round, and a second coding round. The candidate described the loop as stressful but positive overall, and ultimately received a rejection.

Interviewed May 2018 · New York

A data engineer with six years of experience at a Canadian pension fund interviewed for an ICT2/3 role at Apple in Seattle, going through a six-round virtual onsite that ended in a rejection.

Interviewed May 2020 · Seattle

A new-grad candidate walks through four Bloomberg London interview rounds—two coding interviews, a system design round, and a behavioral round—that resulted in an offer within two business days of the final round.

Interviewed February 2021 · London

A 2.6-year SDE-1 engineer's second attempt at Uber Bangalore, prompted by a recruiter re-approach, walks through an online assessment, an added phone screen, and a four-round virtual onsite loop before ending in an SDE-2 offer.

Interviewed March 2024 · Bangalore

Google · L3 Software EngineerOffer

A candidate walks through a full Google onsite loop for an L3 role, covering a behavioral round, an Android-focused system design discussion, and three separate coding rounds, and reflects on why the final level landed below what they had hoped for.

Interviewed October 2019 · Not specified

A candidate's account of a Microsoft new-grad interview loop: four rounds pairing background discussion with coding problems on prime sieves, a grid word game, backspace string comparison, and merge sort, ending in an offer.

Interviewed April 2020 · Not specified

A Bloomberg new-grad software engineer candidate in London describes a phone screen built around a generalized parenthesis-matching problem, followed by a single onsite interview on a custom string-sorting problem. The onsite process ended after one round, and the candidate received a rejection a few days later without detailed feedback.

Interviewed November 2019 · London

A laid-off SDE with five years of experience at two non-FAANG companies went through PayPal's SDE II loop — an online assessment, a coding round, and a system design round — only to have the process end when an HR call over previous compensation turned confrontational and HR canceled the scheduled fourth round.

Interviewed April 2023 · Not specified

A candidate with about three years of SDE experience walks through a six-stage Uber SE2 onsite loop in Hyderabad, describing the phone screen, problem-solving, and machine coding rounds — all of which required tested, working code — before being rejected after the third round.

Interviewed July 2020 · Hyderabad, India

A senior architect with 7.5 years of experience interviewed for an SSE II (Level 5B) role at Uber in India in March 2020, going through eight rounds spanning a phone screen, coding, LLD, HLD, a hiring manager round, and a bar raiser. The candidate cleared the design rounds and solved all coding problems but was rejected after the company assessed their coding speed as too slow.

Interviewed March 2020 · India

A Facebook E5 candidate in the Bay Area walks through a 45-minute phone screen — Add Binary and Merge Intervals as the two coding questions, rough timing on each, and how a later recruiter call relayed hiring-committee approval to move toward an offer.

Interviewed March 2021 · Bay Area

A campus candidate at a Tier 1 institute went through Oracle's Associate Software Engineer hiring process: one online assessment plus three technical rounds covering version control, ML/SQL project depth, and databases/networking/concurrency, with the third round doubling as the HR discussion. The candidate was selected.

Interviewed September 2023 · Not specified

A candidate working as a senior engineer and tech lead interviewed for an IC-level role (listed as IC2 in the post title, IC3 in the body) on Oracle's OCI team in Bangalore, going through five rounds spanning system design, database and ACID fundamentals, and coding problems before receiving an offer.

Interviewed March 2022 · Bangalore, India

A Software Engineer with three years of experience interviewed for a Member of Technical Staff (IC-2) role on Oracle's OCI team in Seattle, going through a one-hour phone screen and a five-round virtual onsite before receiving an offer.

Interviewed September 2020 · Seattle, WA

A candidate with six-plus years of backend Java and Spark experience walked through a five-round Adobe Senior Software Engineer (SSE) loop in India: four onsite rounds in one day plus a video-conferencing round a couple of days later, spanning data structures, concurrency design, architecture, and systems estimation.

Interviewed August 2019 · India

A pre-sales employee at Oracle interviewed internally for a software engineer role on the OCI team, going through five rounds covering coding fundamentals, OCI infrastructure concepts, and a behavioral bar raiser, and received an offer.

Interviewed March 2020 · Not specified

A five-plus-year engineer's account of interviewing for a Salesforce SMTS role in Bengaluru, covering a timed coding round, an in-memory file system design round, and a hiring manager conversation, ending in an offer.

Interviewed October 2023 · Bengaluru

A new graduate with a master's in computer science recounts an Oracle OCI hiring process sourced through LinkedIn outreach — a hiring manager call, a technical phone screen, and a five-round Santa Clara onsite covering coding, system design, and OO design — that ended in rejection.

Interviewed February 2020 · Santa Clara, CA

A candidate's account of an Atlassian SDE 2 (P4) interview loop in Bangalore, spanning a technical HR discussion, low-level design, code design, system design, a values round, and a management round, and ending in an offer about a week after the final interview.

Interviewed September 2021 · Bangalore

A software engineer with about 2.3 years of experience at a large service-based company interviewed in person for a Software Developer role at an Oracle campus in Bengaluru. The day combined a technical round, a managerial round, and a closing conversation with a senior director, and ended with a verbal offer while compensation was still to be discussed.

Interviewed July 2024 · Bengaluru, India

A senior engineer's account of Salesforce's SMTS hiring process in Hyderabad: an online assessment followed by a single-day hiring drive covering a coding round, a low-level design round, and a manager round, ending in an offer.

Interviewed February 2025 · Hyderabad

A candidate accepted a Software Engineer offer from Oracle in Bengaluru after a recruiter screen, an online assessment, and two onsite technical rounds covering Java/OOP fundamentals, DSA, SQL, logic puzzles, quantitative reasoning, and a system design question.

Interviewed July 2024 · Bengaluru

A candidate referred into Oracle Cloud Infrastructure through a personal contact went through a phone screen and five onsite interviews in Seattle covering graph search, tree iterators, a randomized phone-number design problem, a compressed system design discussion, and a hard string problem, alongside a separate behavioral conversation, and received an offer within the same week.

Interviewed January 2020 · Seattle, WA

A candidate interviewed for an SDE II role at DoorDash's San Francisco office in October 2021, moving from a remote phone screen through two onsite coding rounds, a system design round on a large-scale donation platform, and a behavioral round built around DoorDash's stated principles; the loop ended in a rejection.

Interviewed October 2021 · San Francisco

A candidate with 10+ years of experience interviewed remotely for a Computer Scientist II role at Adobe's Noida office. Two one-hour rounds mixed probability and design puzzles with heavy C++ language questions, and the process ended without a callback after round two.

Interviewed December 2020 · Noida, India

An eight-year-experience candidate went through a Salesforce onsite loop for an SMTS role, performing well across coding, high-level design, and a hiring-manager round. A pay-band mismatch led the recruiter to add an extra round for the higher LMTS level; that round went less smoothly, and the candidate was ultimately turned down for LMTS.

Interviewed October 2023 · Not specified

A mid-level L4 Software Engineer candidate walks through a virtual DoorDash onsite loop covering a trie-based data structure design problem, a hiring-manager conversation, a classic histogram algorithm question, and a system design round for a high-traffic charity donation app, alongside an uneven experience with interviewer engagement in the final round.

Interviewed October 2022 · New York, NY (interview conducted virtually)

A candidate contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn interviewed for a Salesforce MTS role in March 2022. After a 90-minute online assessment, the onsite stage ran three rounds: two coding-focused rounds the candidate found adversarial in pacing and interviewer behavior, and a hiring manager conversation. The loop ended in an offer.

Interviewed March 2022 · Not specified

A candidate describes a Salesforce in-person hiring drive for Member of Technical Staff (MTS) roles based in Bangalore or Hyderabad. The drive ran as five elimination rounds in a single visit: an online assessment followed by four back-to-back onsite interviews covering data structures and algorithms, system design, and a hiring manager conversation, ending in an accepted offer.

Interviewed November 2023 · Interview conducted in Pune, India; role based in Bangalore or Hyderabad

A candidate holding an SDE2-level position with a B.Tech from NIT interviewed for a Member of Technical Staff (MTS) role at Salesforce in Bangalore, India in October 2023. The loop consisted of two technical onsite rounds covering coding problems, code quality, and design principles, followed by a hiring manager round focused on behavioral questions, and ended in an offer.

Interviewed October 2023 · Bangalore, India

Amazon · Applied Scientist (L4)Offer

A redirected recruiter call turned into an Amazon Applied Scientist loop with the Alexa Speech team: a phone screen, a split five-round virtual onsite across two teams, a bar raiser, and an added ML-breadth round, ending in an offer with a downlevel from L5 to L4.

Interviewed July 2021 · Boston, MA (Remote)

Amazon · Front End DeveloperNo offer

A front-end developer's phone screen with Amazon went well by the candidate's own account and the interviewer's real-time feedback, covering CSS, JavaScript closures, and two coding exercises, but ended in a rejection with no reason given despite repeated follow-up.

Interviewed 2022 · Not specified

Amazon · SDE INo offer

A candidate preparing for Amazon SDE I described a phone screen followed by a four-round onsite that mixed coding, Leadership Principles, and one system design round, and shared why they believe the loop ended in rejection.

Interviewed 2020 · Not specified

A candidate applied to ByteDance twice, moved into an onsite loop of four technical rounds plus a hiring manager round, and received an offer despite a process that felt disorganized at times.

Interviewed 2020 · Not specified

Google · L4 Software Engineer, Google CloudOffer

A referred candidate interviewed for an L4 software engineer role on a Google Cloud team in Bangalore, going through a phone screen, three onsite coding rounds (the third left unfinished), and a culture conversation, only to have the hiring committee offer L3 instead of L4; the candidate obtained the compensation letter and declined the next day because the pay was below their current salary.

Interviewed 2021 · Bangalore, India

Google · L4 Software EngineerOffer

A four-year FAANG+ engineer in India ran parallel interview pipelines with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Uber over about six months, closing with offers from Google (L4), Microsoft (L62), and Amazon (L5), and a rejection from Uber.

Interviewed January 2021 · Not specified

Google · L4 Software EngineerOffer

A backend engineer with several years at another large tech company describes preparing for and clearing Google's L4 loop in India, after an earlier attempt had ended at the phone screen stage.

Interviewed November 2024 · India

Google · L5 Machine Learning EngineerOffer

A candidate applying for an L5 machine learning engineer role at Google had the phone screen skipped due to a referral and prior tenure at the company, then went through four technical and design rounds plus a behavioral round before receiving an L5 offer. The loop was one leg of a broader search that produced offers from several companies in the same cycle.

Interviewed April 2022 · Remote

Google · L5 Software EngineerOffer

A senior software engineer with eight years of experience went through a Google L5 loop as part of a multi-company search that also produced offers from Bloomberg and Facebook. Google waived the phone screen and moved straight to a virtual onsite of three coding rounds, a system design round, and a Googlyness round; the panel then asked for two additional coding rounds and another system design round before the process concluded in an offer.

Interviewed 2021 · Not specified

Google · Software Engineer, SDE 1Outcome unknown

A candidate who interviewed with both Microsoft and Google around the same time shares the Google SDE 1 onsite loop: a word-transformation reachability problem in one round, and a two-part round covering a grid typing-distance optimization and a set-outlier detection problem. No final outcome for the Google process was stated.

Interviewed May 2020 · Not specified

Google · Software EngineerOffer

A candidate with a nontraditional, security-and-cryptography-leaning background skipped Google's phone screen at the recruiter's suggestion and went straight to a single-day virtual onsite in March 2020, covering four coding rounds and one behavioral round. Despite Google's reputation for a slow process, the candidate heard back with a pass within two days, cleared the Hiring Committee, and received an initial offer of about $280k per year in total compensation.

Interviewed March 2020 · Remote (virtual interview due to COVID-19)

Google · Software EngineerOutcome unknown

A self-taught full-stack engineer running a wide 2020 job search got into Google's pipeline through a recruiter's cold LinkedIn message and went straight to a five-interview virtual onsite, skipping a phone screen. Feedback was mostly positive except for one round built around Dijkstra's algorithm, which the candidate had not specifically prepared for. That mixed result sent the packet to a hiring committee, which asked for two more interviews before deciding — interviews that never happened because the candidate accepted a competing offer first.

Interviewed 2020 · Remote

A candidate applying broadly for SDE roles in December 2024 went through a LinkedIn phone screen that opened with project questions, including a DynamoDB tradeoffs discussion, before moving into a single coding problem (Long Pressed Name). The candidate was rejected and wrote up a self-review pointing to weak project answers, messy code, and missed edge cases as the likely causes.

Interviewed December 2024 · Not specified

A computer science student interviewing during a December 2021 on-campus placement season describes their three Myntra SDE 1 rounds: two data-structures rounds followed by a resume-heavy managerial round with a system-design question. The original post does not state whether an offer followed.

Interviewed December 2021 · Not specified

A candidate with 2.5 years of experience interviewed for a Member of Technical Staff role at Salesforce through two code pair rounds focused on core data structures, followed by a project walkthrough and team-fit discussion, and was selected.

Interviewed 2022 · Not specified

A candidate with more than eight years of experience, based in Bengaluru, documented a job search spanning seventeen interview loops across fourteen companies, with sixteen ending in rejection. Salesforce came up twice: an earlier two-round loop ended in rejection after a low-level design round, and a later, separate four-round loop resulted in an offer a few days after the final round.

Interviewed 2021 · Bengaluru, India

After a company shutdown, this SDE III candidate ran roughly 80 interviews across many companies within about six weeks, landing offers from Confluent, Bitgo, Uber, Coupang, and Stripe before accepting Uber's offer following a five-round DSA/LLD/HLD/hiring-manager loop.

Interviewed 2024 · India