Not sharing it anonymously because there isn't anything which I am not comfortable sharing openly. Hence please upvote if you like the post.
I am sharing my interview experiences with various companies and mostly PRE-IPO startups because I wanted to move to a fast pace environment where I can build something from scratch, get more involved in engineering decisions, design pricinciples and things around that.
Companies I interviewed with -
Unacademy, Razorpay, Confluent, Cohesity, Mindtickle, Microsoft, Yalochat (A Mexican startup on AI), Falconx (A US crypto startup based out of san mateo), Rippling.
Preparation -
Usual LC problems (mostly easy and medium) not with interview preparation in mind as such. More of a casual weekly thing for me. For System Design there isn't anything new which you guys don't already know of and something that isn't already available of this platform. Few things which have helped me apart from the above sources are
- Reading engineering tech blogs of various companies which I regulary follow and I also share it with my linkedin network. You can check them out there
- Following blog posts of Alex Xu
- for LLD, I practised some interesting questions which I thought can be expected from a candidate of my experience.
Splitwise; Concurrent logger system; Battleship game; multi-directory file system with read-write permissions; circuit breaker; Task Scheduler; Concurrent LRU Cache and some more. - Reading DDIA is still in progress
Interview experiences -
Feel free to reach out to me if you want to know particularly about any of these companies interview questions/experiences in further details.
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Unacademy(SSE) - Level (medium), 3 Rounds (HLD + PS, LLD, HLD + HM). Verdict - Offered
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Razorpay(SSE) - Level (medium), 3 Rounds (LLD, HM + Project discussion, HLD) Verdict - Rejected because my current projects are not along the similar lines of what Razorpay is working on.
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Confluent (L5) - Level (medium/Hard) 7 Rounds (2 Screening + 5 on-site). Screen rounds were DP Hard problems which required a working code. Each on-site round was focused on different aspect. first round was on problem solving and multi-threading. Second round focused purely on concurrency and job scheduling. Each of these rounds will expect you to code down the actual problem. Third round is focused on system design but from API design/Networking protocols perspective. Fourth round is focused on High level system design. Final round is with the hiring manager and focuses on leadership principles. I got 4 "hire" and 1 "no-hire" (3rd round) because of which overall verdict was Rejected.
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Cohesity (SMTS) - Level (Medium) 4 rounds (2 Problem Solving + 1 HM + 1 System Design)
Verdict - Offered -
Microsoft (L63) - Level (Medium) 5 rounds (2 Problem solving + 2 LLD design rounds + 1 HM)
verdict - Offered -
Yalochat (SSE) - Level (Medium) 4 rounds (API designing + System Design + HM + Discussion with CTO)
verdict - Offered
API designing involved writing working code where we are free to use internet and search of syntaxes or frameworks if needed. -
Falconx (SSE/TechLead) - Level (Medium/Hard) 4 Rounds ( 2 Problem Solving + 2 System Design)
verdict - Offered
Each of the rounds were elimination rounds. First two rounds expect you to come up with working solution of the problems whose level is LC Medium. The questions asked in the SD rounds were a little tougher than the usual ones and they will allow you to lead the interview and dig deep into the working on the design. -
Rippling (Lead Engineer) - Level (Medium/Hard) 4 rounds ( 1 API designing, 1 Problem Solving + 2 System Designs)
verdict - Offered
API designing round expects you to write production standard API to solve the problem. Later you can be asked to extend the solution by implementing approrpiate design patterns. Problem Solving round is a 45 minute round where they will start with a very simple question and keep on extending it as we keep discussing the solution. Once they are satisfied with your solution to the final problem, you will be expected to code it out. Design rounds are like any typical HLD SD interviews.
Of the offers that I got, I have decided to go forward with Falconx because of multiple reasons.
The experience I had with all the interviewers was amazing. They are trying to solve a very interesting and nuance problem in crypto world right now.
They offered the best compensation (way better than the second best).
Fintech has excited me for sometime and getting to work with Web 3.0 at this point of time can be a good learning and a completely new experience for me.
They are already a profit making startup and at a very pretty stable situation right now. I will be there 36th full time Engineer, so the accountability would be high on me and the work would be pretty good. Also if all things go well, may be I could also be a part of their mega success story some years down the lane.
Edit :- People asking for compensation details. Let's not get into the real numbers as I am putting it non-anonymously but to put in a perspective.
If we have to put the offers I received on a scale it would be something like
Unacademy < MS < Cohesity < Yalo < Rippling < FalconX
Edit 2 :- Some have asked what went wrong with Confluent third round. TBH, I have no clue what went wrong there. It was a known question to me and I writing my APIs with Python coding style (using flask) with some dummy SQL queries to fetch the data wherever needed. In my head, I did just fine but to be surprise, the feedback was it was really bad and what interviewer expected v/s what I delivered were poles apart. May be it was because of lack of clarification from interviewer or my side. I never got any hints or leads from the interviewer which could tell me if I was going in wrong direction or if he expects me to talk about something specific.
Edit 3: Rippling process is complete and I got the offer. Here is the interview experience of that interview in detail
https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1979218/Interview-experience-with-Rippling-or-L6-or-Offer