I was recently contacted by a recruiter from Rippling for an Senior software Engineer role.

The process started with a phone screening with HR, which was followed by a coding round scheduled a week later.

Coding Round Experience
The problem was Delivery System. (You can find the exact problem here).

I had Copilot enabled in my IDE, but it became clear early on that the interviewer’s expectation wasn’t about typing speed or boilerplate code. Instead, the real focus was on how deeply I could solve the problem and handle as many follow-ups as possible.

To structure my approach, before writing any code I walked the interviewer through my:

• Design decisions

• Choice of data structures

• Time and space complexities for each API

This helped set context for how I was planning to solve the problem.

How I Performed

• I was able to finish the first part of the problem and one follow-up, with all test cases passing.

• A lot of my time went into carefully thinking about edge cases and writing my own test scenarios.

• One challenge was with the time format in the interviewer’s test cases. My solution used string → epoch conversion, so I had to spend extra time updating their test cases to match my input format.

Outcome
Even though I felt good about my performance and problem-solving approach, the feedback was negative. The interviewer was expecting me to handle more follow-ups within the given time, which I wasn’t able to complete.

I tried reaching out to the company for more detailed feedback, but as is often the case, not every company shares this information openly.

Overall, it was still a good learning experience, and I came away with clarity on the importance of prioritizing follow-ups quickly during timed interviews, especially when tools like Copilot can reduce boilerplate work.

May be it was not my day.