I was contacted by a recruiter for a role I had applied for.

The first step was a technical screen, a coding round.

The second step was a virtual onsite loop, comprising:

• One coding round
• One code review round
• One system design round
• One project deep dive behavioral round

I enjoyed the behavioral and system design rounds and felt they went well.

The code review round was a black hole of an experience. The interviewer rarely spoke and seemed completely disconnected the whole time.

Both coding rounds involved one fairly procedural (i.e., not LeetCode) question within the 45-minute block. They both had verbose problem statements that seemed designed to require clarification on formatting and edge cases. However, in both interviews, I had trouble getting that clarification from the interviewers.

(In one case, I was about 75% through implementing an approach I had verbalized to start with and had asked for alignment on, only to be told by the interviewer that the entire approach was wrong when I was nearly done.)

In the end, I produced working solutions, but definitely not as quickly as should have been possible.

About a week after the loop, I emailed the recruiter to ask for feedback and was told I "did well," but the team opted to go with a different candidate. I don't get the sense I would have gotten an update at all if I hadn't pinged.

They did not respond when I asked for clarification about whether I could be considered for a different team.

Between a couple of inhospitable interviewers and the lack of timely, useful feedback, I'm marking this as a negative candidate experience.

2 coding interviews (between tech screen and loop) 1 code review 1 system design interview 1 behavioral interview focused on a single project deep dive