I decided to do LC for 2-3 months and attended several interviews. My intention wasn’t to join any of these companies due to location constraints. Also, recruiters reached out to me on LinkedIn, I wasn’t looking to change my current job. They are just my practice interviews.
I gave interviews at Amazon, Bloomberg, PayPal and American Express. I am yet to appear for Facebook but that’s because I don’t want to mess it up so I will take more time before I appear. My goal is to get into FB since they offer remote.
Hoping my learnings help someone in my shoes.
- Amazon Phone screen: This was my very first interview after three months of prep. I had solved 80 Amazon tagged by this time.
I didn’t need to do OA, they directly scheduled a phone screen. He asked LP for first 20 mins then pasted a wordy problem, took me 5 mins to read it another 10 mins to understand it. It was similar to min Stack which I didn’t realize and solved it using Heaps. Interviewer was looking for LinkedList/Stack based solution.
Result: Reject.
Lesson Learned: Read the question carefully, don’t panic, try to map it to existing LC questions that you have done. Don’t get lost in words.
- American Express:
a. Phone Screen: one LC easy. I hadn’t done it before but was able to solve it just before the interview ended.
b. Onsite round 1: It was OOD real life coding round which involved some String manipulations. Not on LC.
c. Onsite round 2: System Design. I prepared sys design for this round, but they only asked me to create APIs.
d. Onsite round 3: Behavioral with EM and Director.
Result: Offer
Lesson Learnt: I prepared a lot for this one since I didn’t know what to expect (was really demotivated after Amazon reject) but to my surprise, I could have cleared it with 0 preparation with the same result.
- Bloomberg:
a. Phone Screen: Two standard LC questions, one medium and one easy. A lot of questions about my previous experience.
b. Onsite round 1: Coding question can be found in discuss section. I hadn’t done it before. I wrote 90% of the solution. With the help of interviewer hints I completed the code 100%.
c. Onsite round 2: Got blank for 10 mins, didn’t know how to solve it. Every time I tried to write something, interviewer asked me to explain thought process first. Honestly, I had none, I was hoping to write some data structures down to help me think. Finally, when I started writing code, I could complete it but by this time I had lost interviewer’s confidence in me.
d. Onsite round 3: System design with EM. It was weird, I asked him if I can draw HLD, he said No just wanted to have discussion. Round was over in 45 mins.
Lesson Learnt: DO check discuss section previous interview experience and solve those questions religiously. I didn’t get any tagged questions but later I found each one on discuss. It’s a myth that if you cleared coding rounds then only you will move forward to EM round. I moved to EM round regardless but failed coding. Recruiter gave me this feedback. All the rounds involve Tech related behavioral questions as well, make sure you prepare for them as well.
Result: Reject
- PayPal:
a. Phone Screen: I was surprised there was no coding round here. It was just a general chat with the manager.
b. Onsite round 1: Deep dive in past experiences and technologies. Asked me several System design concepts and the tradeoffs considered in current architecture. One hour long grilling round. NO coding.
c. Onsite round 2: One Graph LC question. Didn’t give me chance to ask question in the end. Lots and lots of system design and architecture questions.
d. Onsite round 3: 1. OOD coding question with real life scenario. 2. Dynamic programming question last 5 mins.
e. Onsite round 4: 1 Graph question not on LC. Didn’t give me chance to ask question in the end. Lots of system design and architecture questions.
f. Onsite round 5: Behavior.
Lesson Learnt: They give too much importance to general tech stack knowledge. Each round had system design/ architecture/ language related trivia / Internal understanding of Data structure / trade-offs of technologies and so on along with coding. They will grill you on each answer. It is going to be ONE HOUR pure tech round with probably no time in the end for any question to the interviewer. Also, it depends on team. Some teams follow different structure so your experience might be different
** Result: ghosted**
**Out of all the interviews I attended Paypal hurt me the most, not because I wanted to join them. They don’t value candidate’s time. I wasted 5 hours with them, and they didn’t have a courtesy to send auto reject. Recruiter ghosted me. I waited 3+ weeks and no reply. I’d avoid them like a plague in future. **
After going through total 15 rounds of interviews on top of my current demanding job I was burnt out and had no energy to study/ apply in any other company. I don’t know how some people interview at 10-15 places parallelly. I was exhausted after all the onsites but I am proud of myself that I was almost there and didn’t entirely bomb any of the interviews. Despite getting rejection from Amazon and BBG I wasn’t blocked from applying immediately. Bloomberg recruiter even connected with me after and said he’d try in a different team. Right now, I am just exhausted and taking break. My goal is to clear FB onsite, so my preparation is moving towards that direction.