I recentaly attended interview for staff engineer role at service now.
I cleared first round with two medium leetcode
- Sudoku solver
- Extention of above to fill numbers (its on leetcode)
Second round was supposed to be system design. But interviewer asked algorithms.
Not a problem,
- tertiary search (binary search extension)
- question based excel forumla
solved both and he was satisfied as well. (these question dont even have different solution that would invite time complexity discussions.)
Eventually he asked where i am from.(which state in India) 2 days later got rejection email.
Sometimes these interviewers are search for people who they want to be, may be from their own state or collage.
preconceptions are worst when it comes to interviews. our hard works is not just ignored but seeing these kind of partial behaviour asks us to question if its really worth preparing for interviews if they just move you next round because you are having something like religion, place and language in common rather than knowledge. Not expected this from servicenow at least.
This looks like common experience based on my discussion with several people who took interview.
THis was supposed to be final round before hiring manager.
