This was one bad experience. I have interviewed at many places—big and small companies—and the experience at Airbnb is easily the worst. I applied online, and HR called to schedule a phone interview. We went back and forth, and they could not interview on the dates I had provided. I was going to be in SF for something else the next week, and they suggested that I come onsite directly for interviews, as the phone interview dates were not working out. So I extended my stay (at my own expense, as I am not a local candidate) and got ready for onsite interviews. When I went there and asked for the agenda, the HR told me it was going to be just one interview—similar to a phone interview except that it would be in person. I was shocked. I showed them the email where they confirmed me for onsite, and they simply stated it was a communication mishap. This cost me heavily in terms of time and money. The HR seemed very careless and inefficient.

As for the interview, the interviewer asked me a Dynamic Programming question (a hard one) and said he didn't care how I implemented it but just wanted working code in 30 minutes. I tried and was very close to the solution. I had a minor bug in the base case of my recursion. The interviewer just stood up at the 30-minute mark and left abruptly. I came out and quickly tried the solution on my laptop. I was able to complete it and get it working in another 5 minutes. But from the looks of it, there is no credit for implementation idea, thought process, or any such thing.

Overall, a very negative experience.

Dynamic Programming Question