Software Engineer Interview Experience - San Francisco, California
Process
Applied via internal referral, the recruiter emailed me promptly and set me up for a technical phone screen.
During the tech screen, the interviewer was silent for the entire call. Someone else here on Glassdoor mentioned they had the same experience (so be prepared for the tech phone screen to be entirely you talking and coding, with the person on the other end not giving you any verbal feedback or hints).
I let this get to me; I got really nervous and lost my train of thought several times. Though I felt I had a decent approach by the end, I wasted most of my time on a bad approach and didn't have time to optimize or print out the result.
I got an email a couple days later that said I didn't pass the phone screen.
Questions
You are given an array of CSV strings representing search results. The results are sorted by a score initially. A given host may have several listings that show up in these results. Suppose we want to show 12 results per page, but we don’t want the same host to dominate the results. Write a function that will reorder the list so that a host shows up at most once on a page, if possible, while otherwise preserving the ordering. Your program should return the new array and print out the results in blocks representing the pages.
Sample Input: [ "host_id,listing_id,score,city", "1,28,300.1,San Francisco", "4,5,209.1,San Francisco", "20,7,208.1,San Francisco", "23,8,207.1,San Francisco", "16,10,206.1,Oakland", "1,16,205.1,San Francisco", "1,31,204.6,San Francisco", "6,29,204.1,San Francisco", "7,20,203.1,San Francisco", "8,21,202.1,San Francisco", "2,18,201.1,San Francisco", "2,30,200.1,San Francisco", "15,27,109.1,Oakland", "10,13,108.1,Oakland", "11,26,107.1,Oakland", "12,9,106.1,Oakland", "13,1,105.1,Oakland", "22,17,104.1,Oakland", "1,2,103.1,Oakland", "28,24,102.1,Oakland", "18,14,11.1,San Jose", "6,25,10.1,Oakland", "19,15,9.1,San Jose", "3,19,8.1,San Jose", "3,11,7.1,Oakland", "27,12,6.1,Oakland", "1,3,5.1,Oakland", "25,4,4.1,San Jose", "5,6,3.1,San Jose", "29,22,2.1,San Jose", "30,23,1.1,San Jose" ]
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 82 interview experiences for the Airbnb Software Engineer role in San Francisco, California.
Success Rate
Airbnb's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in San Francisco, California is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having mixed feelings for Airbnb's Software Engineer interview process in San Francisco, California.
Airbnb Work Experiences
- 5.0Great Projects, Slow CollaborationSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJune 12, 2025Pros: Interesting projects, cares about employees.Cons: Very layered management. Slow to collaborate between orgs.
- 5.0An inspiring and fulfilling place to work!Software Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesDecember 9, 2016Pros: - Genuinely supportive and invested coworkers. - Founders are very focused on not stagnating as we grow. - Engineers can choose their own team, so you can find a team that suits you in terms of work-life balance/productivity. There's no global company culture of "workaholics" or "slackers"; you really can find the right role for you. - Similarly, it's easy to find the kind of eng role you prefer (product, front-end, infra, etc). - Diversity efforts are the best I've ever seen or heard of in a large tech company. Estaff is very committed to increasing our internal diversity and also making sure there are no problems with discrimination of any kind. (Our mission is "belong anywhere," and leadership takes that very, very seriously, including internally.) - Leadership is constantly working to fix any employee issues that arise. We take tons of happiness surveys and have lots of communication on how they're planning to improve things that are issues. - Basically, Airbnb has always seemed very committed to employee happiness via perks, transparency, and inclusion, and it works!Cons: Sometimes the growing pains can get frustrating and things can move kind of slow, but in my experience it's better than most companies this size. Gym memberships are not included in perks.
- 5.0Great Engineering Culture, Great Talent, Tons of PotentialSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJune 11, 2017Pros: They're doing a great job bringing in engineering talent to shore up their infrastructure. Over the last six months, they've brought in top talent from companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google. It really shows when you see what's planned for the next year. Some great tooling. The development environments leave something to be desired, but their core infrastructure (especially some of the backend services) is really impressive. Tons of companies in SV are using many of the tools Airbnb has open-sourced, and this is only a fraction of what's been built. They're aware of technical debt. The current stack is very Ruby-heavy and monolithic, and they're migrating to well-defined Java/Scala microservices, which is great. Very little red tape to actually deploy code. The culture is a thing. If you're a "gilfoyle," you'll probably hate it here. Thankfully, they do a good job bringing in people that actually want to be there and care about the product. Food is amazing, better than Facebook. Also great benefits and fantastic compensation if you're on the more experienced side. Massive potential. The exec team is focusing on the right projects to get to a point where we can IPO. We're not quite there yet, but it's an exciting time to be here. They actually care about their customers. Brand new hardware. Epic office. This place is an interior design marvel. Health insurance, etc., are excellent. You can pick your team as an engineer. This leads to better chemistry and keeps all teams focused on making themselves appealing.Cons: Last year or so, they promoted some people to management that really need more training. So on some teams, you're not going to have a great time. If you're not an engineer, YMMV. I've heard the food team, facilities, etc., is largely being phased out for contractors. Tiny 401k match. But this should probably change when they IPO. You really have to carve out your own path here. If you want a clear progression, this is not the place for you.
Airbnb Interview Questions
