Updated by OpenAI candidates
Software engineer Interview Experience
I still can’t tell if the final twist had a right answer, or if it was a test of how I handle something nearly impossible.
Interview process
I only had a recruiter call and then one system design round before they made a decision. The technical prompt was to design a chat application similar to ChatGPT. Most of it didn't feel that bad to me, so I was a little surprised by the outcome. I got rejected right after that round. It was a much shorter process than a lot of other loops I've done.
- Recruiter screen
- Technical interview
Interview rounds
2 questions across 2 roundsRecruiter screen
1 questionOverview
It was a pretty standard recruiter call with basic placement and background questions, and nothing in that round felt tricky.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
Can you walk me through your background and what kind of role placement made sense?
I just went through my background and some basic placement questions. It felt pretty routine, and I moved on from that round without anything unusual happening.
Technical interview
1 questionOverview
This was a system design for a chat application similar to ChatGPT that felt manageable at first, then got less standard when the interviewer added a versioning and branching-history twist near the end.
Question types asked
Specific questions asked
How would you handle versioning so a chat could pick up from a certain point in a previous chat?
I didn't think the core design was that difficult, and I felt okay about the standard parts. Near the end, though, he added a twist around versioning, basically branching history where a chat could pick up from a certain point in a previous chat. That was the part that threw me a bit. I still can't really tell whether he wanted a very specific answer there or if he was making it semi-impossible on purpose to see how I handled it.
Interview tips
I'd prep past the obvious architecture and spend real time on how conversation state works when people want to revisit, reuse, or fork earlier context. For a chat product, versioning and branching history are worth practicing, not just the base messaging flow. If they throw in something that feels semi-impossible, I'd say my assumptions out loud and ask whether they want the practical version or whether they're mostly testing how I deal with ambiguity.
Company culture
They seemed pretty comfortable making a fast call off a short process. In my case it was recruiter, one technical round, then done. The interviewer style also felt like they wanted to see what happened when the problem got messier late in the conversation, not just whether I could walk through a standard system design answer.
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