Twitter | SWE | Seattle | Sep 2019 [No Offer]
Anonymous User
3920

All coding rounds were on a laptop in a Hackerrank session. So I could write code as well write my test cases and execute them.

Round 1

https://leetcode.com/problems/decode-string/
I was able to write code and test cases in < 15 mins.

Round 2

https://leetcode.com/problems/combination-sum-iii/
I was able to write code and test cases in ~ 15 mins.
Selected Java 7 on Hackerrank and my solution failed to compile. Took me 5 mins to figure out what was wrong.

Round 3
System design for a Config Operation system where client can call update config on multiple clusters. There is a Management service that can update the config for 1 cluster at a time. Use the Management service API to design the system.

Very open ended. Felt that interviewer already had some design in mind and would not let me explore any other system.
Additionally the system to be designed would have CURD operations but need not keep track of previous operations. Very unlikely to any production system where you won't be able to revert.

Worked on several of such systems and felt like I had failry good idea of how they would work and be designed. I could clearly tell that interviewer was not impressed.

Round 4 | Behavioral
Interviewer went as far back in time as 7 years. Asked me to name all my managers and what they thought about me. Even for the company where I worked 7 years back.

Overall impression
Very Negative culture. Not felt like the place I would want to work. I could see the politics even in the interview.
Every interview had 2 people. So sort of Panel interview.
More than 50% of interviewers were based in California and were joining via Video Conferencing.
I was open to interview at California as well but Manager was Seattle based.

Impression of Engineers
Liked most of them except the guy in System Design interview. All other engineers were fairly friendly and were trying to have a conversation rather than Interrogation. The Senior Engineer (System Design) however was trying to put me down rather than trying to mesaure my technical skills.

Impression of Managers
Extremely negative. God knows how they manage (mis-manage) extremely talented engineers.

Technical Difficulty in interview
Almost none. Questions were all very standard Leetcode questions.
System Design went way out of control.

Things to Improve
Could have steered better in System Design.

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