Bloomberg | Software Engineer | 2021 [Reject]
Anonymous User
2004

Phone Interview:

  1. Reverse a linked list.
  2. Given a string, return true or false if the letters can be rearranged into a palindrome.

Onsite:

First Round:
Insert Delete GetRandom.

The first round interviewer was great at making me feel comfortable. We got off to a great conversation at the start about a challenge I had to overcome in a project. Think I spent too much time chatting, it definitely cut into my coding time, but he kept asking me more questions. So I ended up only solving one coding question.

Second Round:
Candy Crush, delete characters in a string duplicated 3 or more times.

The second interviewer talked less. He asked why Bloomberg and why did I switch to be a Software Engineer. At the end he said he was satisfied with my solution. At the end I asked him some questions. I could already feel the reject coming. His responses weren't as thorough and just seemed like he was ready to end it and go on with his day.


Conclusion

I answered all questions correctly. I came up with solutions with all optimal time and space complexity.

Reason why I think I got rejected:

  • I was over-explaining my thought process and approach
  • Which cut into my time, so I only solved one question each round
  • I did miss some edges cases in the first round and the interviewer had to remind me
  • I accidently used .join on something that wasn't join-able because I was thinking ahead too fast while coding, interviewer pointed it out
  • I probably took too long with each question
  • Honestly, I have no idea
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