Background -

YOE - 3 years 10 months
TC - 60 (all fixed), Unicorn startup

How I came across the opportunity ?

• Recruiter reached out over LinkedIn for an SDE 2 position in the backend team.

Virtual Rounds

First 3 Rounds are virtual conducted over phone call and G-meet.

R1: Phone Screening

• General questions, Reason for change, Current Comp, Previous projects, Expected comp, etc

R2: Coding Round

• Platform - Leetcode
• Two questions, 1 Leetcode Hard (Solved with brute force, came to optimized solution but couldnot code because of time), 1 Leetcode Medium (Succssfully solved the optimized solution with approach)
• Verdict - Hire

R3: DB Round

• Platform - Of your choice, I chose excalidraw for some scribbling
• Alot of questions on sharding, scaling, partitioning, db vaccum, indexing
• Alot of project related questions, They question alot on your decision and try to understand the motive behind it.
• Verdict - Strong Hire

On-Site Rounds

They give you return flight tickets and cab to and from airport. Next 3 rounds are on same day, Each round is still an elimination round.

R4: System Design Round (2 hours)

• Very indepth design discussion, they question even the slightest of decision taken
• The system design round was one of the best interviews i have ever given, Interviewer is there to help but you will have to be extremely thoughtful of your answers. Be ready to justify any small big design decisions you took.

R5: Managerial Round (1 hour)

• They ask some techincal questions but it is moslty situational based like how did you handle a conflict in your team, On call procedures, strategy etc
• Try answering diplomatically showing sme flexibility to adapt.
• In my case it was 0 on tech and only behavioural and situational

R6: HR (30 minutes)

• General HR questions, More to know each other.

My System Design, Managerial and HR were conducted one after the other due to time constraints, so i couldnot get any concrete verdict for individual rounds.

They tell you the results after the debrief.

Final Verdict - Reject

A rejection is fine but atleast tell the candidate what went wrong. There interviews are at a very good level but their way to handle feedbacks and communication sucks.

If a candidate is flying to Mumbai to give an interview, the least they can expect is a detailed and concrete analysis of what went wrong or right.
This is the least they should do. Suh things show alot about the office culture.