The software engineering questions were all LeetCode-style. The cultural questions were interesting. The systems design was a fun exercise. Their deep dive into the project interview is odd to me. I'm not sure what it shows to deep dive into it, since people can fake it easily, especially if they are quite the talker.

Despite all the mishaps on Airbnb's side, I got through the day. The first mishap was that the first remote interview was cut off for about 5-10 minutes due to technical issues, and we had to use the recruiter's laptop to continue. The second mishap occurred during the first coding interview; we could not figure out how to make the supplied Mac Mini work, which delayed the interview schedule. The final and biggest mishap was that a lunch interviewer did not show up, which caused an architecture interview to be canceled. This meant I would have had to come in a second time to rectify that. Imagine if I had not come in for an interview.

This is not the experience I expected from Airbnb under any circumstance. Interviews are stressful enough. I do not believe I would have come in for a second architecture interview had I been invited, as enough of my time (8 hours) was already used, and I have other onsite interviews.

The question given to me was presented: "Drop water."