This post about my experience of interviewing during COVID
Shortly about myself
Education: BSc of Computer Science
YOE: 6 years
Position: Senior Software Engineer in Fortune500 company
Location: Seattle, WA
Leetcode: 250 questions solved, mostly medium
I was out of job market for 4 years and coming back to market (for sure not in best time),
I realized how interviewing bar actually was raised since my last interview.
Wanted to pursue my career more in frontend roles, even though was on full stack roles since day 1.
Started hard leetcoding in March and completed twice all p r a m p t questions and interview rounds for practicing verbal communication and code solving within time limits.
During these 3 month of prep, covered almost all topics and could at least solve with brute force any type of problem.
Got all interview invitations via Linkedin, recruiters themselves contacted me first.
1. Facebook | Frontend Developer | Seattle | Online assessment | June [Reject]
Had 2 questions (which I have clarified in advance on how many questions I'll be asked)
1.1 Asked to implement event emitter with some custom logic. I knew how to implement as was practicing all JS topics like debounce, events, promises, observables, throttle and so on. Asked couple clarifying questions and implemented in 5-10 minutes. However interviewer was keep asking me edge cases, or start changing context of inputs, and so we got stuck for too long on that question, which I do believe he could wrap it way earlier.
2.2 Then I asked can we move on to 2nd one (10mins left to finish interview), question related to implement custom animation function. I was able to code quickly some rought solution, but due to time pressure definitely wasnt best one.
As result, I did expect rejection and my interview experience with FB was not so good, interviewer was non friendly (cold), had bad time management and it was impression that he deliberately delayed switching to 2nd question.
2. Amazon | Frontend Developer | Seattle | Phone assessment [Reject]
Had only one question to code from backend to frontend all approach to display table from database.
Asked as usually couple questions to clarify some points and begin to describe step by step of my actions how to fetch data from DB, create endpoint. UI makes http call and JS function to render table with data.
Before coding asked several times on whether its what he expects me to code, as question was pretty open-ended.
Interviewer was pretty friendly, talking non formal, quite opposite to FB's one.
He seems like was happy with solution, was giving me good feedback, made me some complements on how fast I was typing
However how was I wrong with my assumption to pass it :) Its really poker game to judge what Interviewer really thinks about you. I didnt get any feedback from recruiter for a week, and decided to email her to confirm that team is not going forward with me. This one was first rejection after good performance.
3. Paypal | Senior Software Engineer | Remote | Assessment and Virtual Onsite [Reject]
Cleared online assessment, it was pretty easy/medium level LC question on arrays.
Virtual Onsite had 4 rounds:
- Frontend challenge (as role was more frontend) got mock of website and had to code it with html/css and some basic JS to populate some dynamic data. completed before time, asked clarifying questions and etc to get feedback from interviewer. Interviewer was friendly, gave good feedback.
- Algo question on DFS, asked several question and implemented with DFS pretty quickly. Interviewer gave me more complicated case, which it took a bit time to figure out, but was able to solve in 10mins without any hints. Interviewer was cold, and feels like he wasnt glad that I solved problem quickly. (maybe was my mistake that I knew how to solve similar problems, and had to imitate struggle)
- System design question on how to make website scallable to handle million of users. I have my own real experience at work, so shared some tips and ways to archecture infrastrure and app itself. Interviewer was friendly and overall this round was best in terms of interaction.
- Behavioural questions from Hiring manager, it was late evening and was feeling that he tired and unwilling was talking and asking questions. Gave real experience examples (no bs prep answers) for his questions, in general I thought he liked my stories.
At the end of day, I feel happy that made all rounds successfully (was best performance so far). However my emotions were premature. Got call next day from recruiter that team decided to move on. It feels from feedback that suprisingly 1st and 2nd round didnt get good feedback (which I was sure 100%) But here we go... another rejection
4. Google | Frontend Developer | Seattle | Phone assessment [Reject]
Phone call and Google Doc exercise related to n-ary trees like organization hierarchy.
My brute force approach at the begining was with graphs but with small hint quickly moved to trees.
Interviewer didnt give me any hints after that.
Walk through my sudo code with given inputs.
Asked couple questions and clarified if I can go ahead and code if he is okay with my approach.
Implemented data structure and function itself.
Tested on several inputs, took care of edge cases and etc.
Solution was pretty optimal O(n)
Also later copied that solution into leetcode playground and it worked well, tried couple different inputs, in general everything was okay.
Expected that at least with Google I'll pass to virtual onsite... but was suprised that again Rejection.
Dont know how to feel about all that experience, feel a bit demotivated, burned out, and not sure what to do next.
Thinking do I need change something in my prep, or keep trying companies.
Unfortunately I didnt get good feedback on my interview performance, thats why dont know how and which parts need to be improved.
I find its difficult nowadays to read Interviewer's mind and intention, which wasnt case back in my previous job interviews.
Back those days I knew if I was failed or not reading his/her eyes, motions and body language, reaction and overall feedbacks. Today it's poker face game and they just want to end interview on happy note.
Maybe it's combination of bad luck, not right and right people, and so on...
Please share how you cope with series of rejections, I'd love to read your comments and experiences.
I have still couple virtual onsites with mid-tier companies and Tik Tok as well.