Real Interview Experiences
Learn what to expect directly from candidates and interviewers who've been through it.
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“The interview process consisted of two technical rounds and lasted around 5.5 hours in total. The interview started with basic questions and gradually became more challenging. The interviewers focused heavily on problem-solving ability, C++ fundamentals, data structures, memory management, and operating system concepts. For coding questions, they often started with a straightforward version of a problem and then continuously modified constraints, expecting more optimized solutions. What went well was explaining my thought process, discussing trade-offs, and solving the initial versions of the problems. What didn't go well was some of the deeper follow-up discussions around low-level system concepts and advanced optimizations, where the interviewers kept pushing for further improvements.”
“2 HLD rounds, 1 LLD round, 1 HM round. Did well in all the technical rounds. HM round - I got rejected because the Hiring Manager thought my scalability experience was not upto the expectations.”
“It started well, but at some point I was rushing through, so I had to take sometime and relax. I needed to clearly articulate my thoughts process well. Definitely use the STAR method in your preparation, it really worked for me”
“During my Stripe interview process, I felt that most rounds went quite well from my perspective. I came out of the interviews believing I had performed strongly, communicated my experience clearly, and provided thoughtful answers across technical and behavioral discussions. What went well: The interviewers were generally professional and the process was structured. I felt confident in my responses and believed I demonstrated relevant experience effectively. The overall process was organized, and communication from recruiting was mostly clear. What didn’t go well: The feedback I later received felt somewhat misaligned with my own assessment. While I believed I had performed very well, the impression seemed to be that I was viewed as only “okay” across rounds. One frustrating aspect was that interviewers consistently ended sessions around 10 minutes early, which sometimes left me feeling I didn’t have the full opportunity to elaborate further, ask deeper questions, or fully showcase my strengths. This created some uncertainty, as the shortened discussions occasionally made it harder to gauge interviewer engagement or whether enough depth was reached. Overall, while the process itself was smooth and professional, the discrepancy between my perceived performance and the final feedback was disappointing. I believe more consistent use of allotted interview time could have improved the experience and allowed for a fuller evaluation.”
“Can choose between HackerRank and a local IDE for execution. The question is given in several parts; each part's completion is a must to proceed to the next part. There were three parts in total, to be solved within 45 minutes.”
“First screening was good and friendly. They did a good check on my resume and knew it all. The questions were really accurate on each role I had. The problem was that they did not communicate properly about the interview process. For my second round, I was asked to talk to a tech lead so he could see if I am a potentially good fit, and after that, if the answer was yes, the third round is technical, and the fourth is a reference check. Turns out there is no second or third: I showed up in my second round and went straight to whiteboarding and coding. I was shocked. I was prepared for one hour of friendly talk and found myself in 3 and a half hours of an interview. ”
“It didn't go as expected. I did not have as many interviews as expected, and overall, the process wasn't great as the recruiter changed midway.”
“The process was recruiter call followed by technical screen. If one is successful, then virtual onsite - coding and system design/project depending on the team matched with. Recruiters are helpful and explain the process well and send the required material for preparation.”
“The online tech assessment was on the hard side. 2 Medium-to-Hard questions in 90 minutes. Hidden test cases in CodeSignal was a challenge.”
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“The weirdest Anthropic round was the company values interview. It was almost like a therapy session, and honestly if you went to a therapist at some point, you will pass that round much more easily.”
“What was very unusual is they didn’t give me any tooling to draw the system design, so I just sketched it on a piece of paper and talked them through it, then we got into this oddly deep debate about whether hover-over history should count as a recommendation signal.”
