Hi All,

I have been reading a lot of interview experiences here. Since I have been actively interviewing for almost 5 months, I have lot of rejection stories to share. Little bit about me:
YOE: 4 years (1 year US + 3 years India)
Education: MS in CS/ BE Electronics Engineering
Location: Bay Area
Leetcode (LC) questions solved: 400+

To save you sometime, here is my (horrible) experience with the recruiters and some interviewers:

1. Facebook --> misguiding, lying recruiter, interviewer explaining his own question wrong (failed to cram just one question he was supposed to ask),
2. AWS --> lying recruiter
3. VMware --> Poorly conducted, unprepared interviewers

Detailed Experience:

1. AWS (Seattle) March 2020:
   The recruiter reached out to me in March. They set up my Phone screen interview for an SDE 1 role after the initial call. After I reminded them about my close to 4 YOE, they set it up for SDE 2 role. However, the interviewer was apparently an SDE 1 and there was no change in the interview schedule. The interviewer asked some LP questions which I feel I answered upto his satisfaction. He left me with 10 minutes for writing a code, dry run and describing the time complexity. It was a backtracking based hard question. I could write some of the code while discussing my approach. But beacuse of paucity of time, I could just write the approach. Interviewer fumbled a lot when i asked follow up questions to clarify the requirements. He apologized profusely to giving me very little time but seemed satisfied with the approach. 3 days later, I got the rejection email.

2. Oracle (Seattle) March 2020:
   It was a medium LC question. While I was able to finish and able to run the code, I did many noob mistakes. REJECTED in few hours :)

3. Remitly (Seattle) March 2020:
   45 minutes phone screen with the Hiring Manager. He asked a simple OOO design question (not on LC). While I could write the meat of the code, I totally panicked and failed to design the classes etc. I was. expecting a reject and that was it. However, a good learning experience and the manager seemed pretty chilled out.

   [EDIT] The same recruiter reached out to me for another role. When I reminded her that I have already interviewed months back, her tone entirely changed. She said she will get back to me after passing me resume to the manager but she didn't. Not that I was hopeful for her to get back. The lady perhaps thinks that people can't learn in the ample time of 5 months. If I were to put in extra months of preparation, I would not targetting Remitly. After this ghosting, I am no longer interested in this small company acting like PayPal on steroids.

4. Amazon (Seattle) April-June 2020 :
   I was reached out by the recruiter on Hired. I was able to clear the written round (all test cases passed) and phone screen. I had onsite with them after couple of weeks. I prepared a lot - LC, System Design from the very talked about resources, OOO design etc. While the coding rounds went smoothly, I felt the Sys Design and Manager round didn't go too well. The engineer during System Design seemed done with me right from the start and gave vague answers while I tried to lead the discussion. Eg: I asked how many daily active users are we looking at, which he replied to.. oh I can't give you any number.. assume too many. REJECT in 2 days. :)

5. Facebook (Menlo Park) June 2020 :
   (Team 1)This was perhaps the most lacklustre interview. The interviewer came in and gave a LC Hard question to solve. He had crammed the top solution and would kept on asking me if my approach would work. He ended up changing the context in between and blundered during explanation. Long story cut short - He described the question wrong and finished the round admitting his mistake. REJECT :)

6. VMWare (Palo Alto) July 2020:
   This rejection hurt a lot. I did really well and liked the team. The interviews were scheduled on short notice. A week later, the recruiter informed me that the team really liked me and wanted to hire me. But they found a better candidate so I get the "metaphorical" silver medal. He iterated it's not a reject. But since that still didn't materialize into an offer..It's a REJECT. :)

   [EDIT] Since I had a positive feedback from the first team, the recruiter offered to find another team for me. He did find one and asked me to apply for it when the team publishes the opening for the MTS3 roles. Over a month but the team still couldn't publish the opening. Anyway, I somehow interviewed with this new team after applying to a link provided for a lot senior role. The round with the Director was frustrating. He wanted to hear only what suited him. There was a disconnect between what the recuiter told me and what the Director wanted. The recruiter told me it will be an MTS 3 role (same as last team) but the Director pointed out MTS3 is too senior a role for me.
   After that, he kept on asking how soon I can join? I told him that I would need to serve the 2 weeks notice period at my current employer. Plus the time it takes to transfer my work visa. Few minutes later, he complained that I didn't answer him that how soon I can join him. Bit irritated, I told him attorneys handle the transfer, not me. I doubt he was able to register it. Another red flag- they haven't bothered to see my application where my visa status is clearly mentioned.
   He kept on complaining that I am leaving my current company in one year and he would prefer someone who would stay for a long time. I pointed him out that I worked for 3 years at my first job and left only when going for my MS. This made me clear that he didn't even listen to my answer when he asked why I am leaving my current job in little over a year.
   It was frustrating to see him squirming to join asap when he couldn't even publish the job on the portal in over a month. I had another round with them and satisfactorily solved the question.
   The next day recruiter told me that the Director didn't find me to be a fit at this time (Sure, I was not). He assured that he will keep pn looking for more roles for me. At this point, I told him I am not interested in VMware anymore.
   The way recruitment is done at this company is horrible. Both times, they failed to schedule the interviews on time. If I would provide Thursday and Friday as available days on Monday, they would not get anything done until Thursday. Then they would force me to go through 2-3 rounds with less than a 24 hours notice. Horrible, horrible recruitment.

7. Facebook (Sunnyvale) July 2020:
   (Team 2) The recruiter reached out to me for this position. I clarified that the job description doesn't show that it is a dev team. He assured it is a dev team and I will be a good fit. Cleared the screening rounds (2 of them). Had 4 rounds onsite and until the last round, every interviewer kept on saying: we don't know what actual job would be, please ask these questions to another interviewer. By last round, I finally got to know the recruiter description was miles apart from the actual job. Inspite of that, I think I did really well and expected an offer. However..drum rolls..it is a REJECT. :) Based on these experiences, I have decided not to waste my time with Facebook again. I have similar sentiments for Amazon for different reasons but that is another story.

I am awaiting results from Google and ByteDance after the screening rounds. But I would like to think I have interviewed enough and feel burned out. I think I have improved upon algorithm a lot and observed that I could solve the questions easily. Although I have an MS in CS and BE in Electronics, I never took the foundational algorithm and DS courses officialy. So all this preparation was almost the first time I did things seriously.

So, this was my journey of rejections. Good luck to everyone who have been working hard here and who knows, one day I will have an offer too.
Edit: Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences and encouraging words! I heard back from Google and ByteDance and they want to proceed further. :)