Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience - Seattle, Washington
Process
It seems the hiring process is very strict and weird. I had a telephonic interview that lasted 45 minutes. The interviewer did not ask me any questions about my background and directly jumped to a coding question. They use CoderPad for the interview.
The question was of medium difficulty, and I was able to provide a correct and runnable code in the end. However, I think they were expecting a quicker and perfect answer.
The interviewer was rude, too. He said, "Are you sure you work in Java because you haven't indented your code properly everywhere?"
I was shocked, as I think it is not possible to indent code perfectly in 45 minutes. Anyway, who indents their code manually nowadays when you have pretty good IDEs?
Questions
He gave me an NP-hard problem. The problem involves a list of menu items with their prices and a specific budget. I need to find all combinations of menu items that exactly match the budget. The prices can be in decimal format.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 2 interview experiences for the Airbnb Senior Software Engineer role in Seattle, Washington.
Success Rate
Airbnb's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in Seattle, Washington is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Airbnb's Senior Software Engineer interview process in Seattle, Washington.
Airbnb Work Experiences
- 5.0Middle-paced SDE roleSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeSeattle, Washington, United StatesOctober 21, 2025Pros: Still open to remote; you can always work on a travel.Cons: My role is not customer-facing, so not much impact.
- 5.0Great WLB but bad stock performanceSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeSeattle, Washington, United StatesAugust 11, 2025Pros: Great work-life balance as an employee.Cons: The stock has not performed well these years.
- 1.0It is depressing to work hereSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeSeattle, Washington, United StatesApril 21, 2025Pros: I can’t think of any. Maybe remote.Cons: Even if you have a good idea, you have to live with bureaucracy. Most engineers are very weak here. If you are a good engineer, be ready to be attacked by weak engineers; they survived as a group. If you are right about something, they will say you are wrong, and they don’t understand you together. Managers behave the same way. I made things crystal clear, and they said they don’t understand. Well, these are simple computer science concepts, and if a lot of people say you are wrong, then you will be wrong anyway. Bureaucracy is big here.
Airbnb Interview Questions
