I had my onsite interviews for a senior software engineer role in the first week of August. The position is for a team in the NYC office. All technical questions asked in the interview are available on LeetCode and were medium difficulty. I will not point out the exact questions. I coded all my solutions in C++.

Initial HR call

My first call with a lady from HR was in the last week of July. She gave me a general overlook of the role, the team, the NYC office, a short review of benefits if I get an offer and if I accept it, what to expect in the interview, and the maximum time it will take HR to follow up with the verdict. I asked some questions I had regarding the role, the team, and the interview. She answered all my questions satisfactorily.

Interview day

I had two technical interviews and an interview with the team manager planned out in the same day. All of the interviews were held virtually via Zoom. The lady from HR had made it clear that I should expect the interviews to take up to half a day.

First interview:
My first interview was at 1 PM with a couple of engineers from the team. The engineers were quite young. They had been with the team for a few years. We had a short introduction round. They then asked me to talk about a time where I struggled with a project. I mentioned a recent project which had a huge learning curve. They dug into some details. For example, why did you struggle? How did you work through it? What are the data structures used in the project? Why use data structure X and why not data structure Y? This Q/A session lasted for about 30-40 mins.

Afterwards, I was given a DSA question which was a very close variant of a question listed as medium difficulty on LC. I had to solve the question on HackerRank. I quickly came up with a solution since I had solved similar questions on LC. I discussed a solution with the engineers and began coding it once they were satisfied with my algorithm. However, I was quite nervous and made some stupid typing and conceptual mistakes. The engineers were kind enough to point out some of my mistakes which I corrected. One of the engineers tested my code by running a test case and it worked correctly.

We had reached almost the end of the interview. I was given an opportunity to ask questions. I queried about the team, culture, work/life balance, etc.

Second interview:
The second interview was scheduled immediately after the first one. However, one of the engineers was a few mintues late so the interview started a little behind schedule; no issues though. Both engineers were project leads and had been with the team for 7-8 years. They were quite friendly. There was again a round of introductions. They then asked me to talk about a recent project that I had worked on and explain it in detail. I did just that. There were a lot of back and forth questions and answers. I could tell they were quite interested in learning about what I had worked on. There was a lot of great discussion and I enjoyed talking about my work and appreciated their interest in it. This lasted for about 40 mins.

Next, I was given a DSA question by the second engineer (the one who was late) which was also a very close variant of a question listed as medium difficulty on LC. I had solved similar questions before so I quickly figured out a solution which I discussed with the interviewers. They were satisfied with my approach and asked me to implement it. The engineers didn't care about testing the code and they were okay with not making the code syntactically correct. For example, I could skip header includes, assume I was given correct input etc. I coded the solution and ran through an example. It worked fine. We then had a discussion on the runtime of the algorithm.

Then, the first engineer asked me an OOP question that was related to interfaces and inheritance in C++. I didn't need to code it and he was only looking for a discussion on the possible approaches. I started with a naive approach and we worked our way up to a better design of the interface.

Finally, I was given some time to ask questions. I asked about the background of the team, where it's headed, why should I join the team, etc. I enjoyed this interview quite a lot. This interview lasted in total for about an hour and a half.

Third interview:
The third interview was with the team manager and it was scheduled after the second interview. But I was given a short break before the start of the interview. This interview was not technical. There was a round of introductions. Then, the manager talked about how he runs the team, what is expected, what do I want to work on, what are my priorities, etc. To be honest, this interview shocked me. The way this guy talked.. and the things he talked about.. This guy was fabulous! I could immediately tell that this is the guy I definitely want to work for! There was a click between us! I really really hoped he thought the same way. This interview lasted for about an hour but I didn't even realize the time passing by! I wished we could talk for another hour lol.

HR round:
A short while after the third interview, I had a short round with the same HR lady. She told me that the general feedback from the interviewers was looking good and that I will have a final yes/no answer the following day. We scheduled a call for that.

Next day

I received a call from the HR lady. She told me that the answer from the team was positive and that I will get an offer in the following week. She asked some basic questions like expected compensation etc. I had prepared some things that I had wanted to talk with her in advance in case the answer was positive. We had a lengthy discussion on my questions. She was quite responsive and answered all of my questions in detail. She also offered to arrange a call with Bloomberg's immigration department and with members of the team for which I had applied in case I had questions about the team.

Following week

I had a call with Bloomberg's immigration department. We talked about work authorization, H1B, etc. The lady from the department answered my questions in detail. I also had a meeting with a few members of the team. I had some questions regarding the team, culture, what to expect, what I would be working on, what the team works on, professional growth opportunities, etc. It was a good one hour!

I few days later, I was sent an offer! Everything looked good and I accepted. Can't wait to start working at Bloomberg soon!

Notes+Summary

Here are a few things I gathered from my interview experience:

• I was actively looking for a job and had interviewed with multiple companies already. However, this was by far the best interview experience I had! I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process.
• Expect to have multiple interviews throughout the day! Be well rested. My interviews lasted for about 6 hours (including a few short breaks).
• The HR was quite responsive. They answered all my emails quickly and answered all my questions in detail. The lady from HR offered to call me everytime I had questions which I appreciated.
• The interviewers are there to find out your technical abilities. Have a good communication with them. I think one of the reasons why the interview process was enjoyable was that the interviewers were very responsive and there was no tense environment. We had friendly chat about projects and technical questions. There was no pressure whatsoever.
• Be prepared! Do not expect exact questions from LC. You should expect variations and should know what algorithm/data structure to use in the given scenario. I am strictly against memorizing solutions. Practice, practice, practice!
• Ask questions. I had questions prepared in advance and I think (maybe?) that showed my eagerness to join the team and learn about the company. Every question I asked was answered in detail by everyone.
• Be ready to talk about anything that is on your resume, especially your recent projects. I was asked in-depth questions about my projects, e.g., choice of data structures and why they were chosen, etc.

I hope my interview experience is helpful for someone. Best of luck! Feel free to ask me anything in the comments and I will try to answer to my best ability! Thanks LC and the community for the repository of questions and great discussions for each question. I will try my best to pay it forward!