A recruiter contacted me, stating I could be a potential fit. I was required to complete an Online Assessment (OA) which consisted of two coding challenges (one medium, one hard). I failed one test case on the first question. For the second question, I used a brute-force solution that was likely correct but did not pass the performance test cases.

Despite thinking I wouldn't pass, I was then scheduled for a final loop interview with a month to prepare. They provided a good amount of preparation material covering coding, behavioral, and system design interviews. They understand the interviews are difficult and want candidates to succeed.

My loop interview was virtual, conducted over Chime, and consisted of four one-hour interviews. Each interviewer began with introductions and two to three leadership principle-related questions. The coding was done on a shared online editor with basic syntax highlighting but no compilation capabilities.

1. I had to design and code two methods: addProduct(itemId, timestamp) and getTopProducts(), which retrieves the top 10 most purchased products in the last 24 hours. I initially coded a brute-force solution. Then, I was asked to optimize it and began offering ideas but did not finish coding the optimized version.
2. The system design question focused on AWS S3 cloud file storage. I believe this interview went well, as my architecture diagram was similar to online examples for this problem. The interviewer was an excellent communicator.
3. The coding challenge involved implementing Topological Sort. My code was not very clean, but it should have been correct.
4. I needed to design and code a course manager capable of adding members/students to courses under a given instructor, for example, addToCourse(memberId, instructorId, courseId) and getCourses(instructorId). This was with the most challenging interviewer, as I don't think she understood me and frequently interrupted my thought process. She would paste in code and say, "Maybe I gave too much hint." When I tried to clarify what needed to be implemented, she would paste in more code (data structures and methods). Her communication was not good. Towards the end, she did say my solution was looking great and instructed me to write tests. The interview ran 10 minutes over, and it did not feel well-prepared.

Overall, I felt pretty good about the interviews and don't think I bombed them. A few days later, I received an automated email stating they were not progressing with my application, with no feedback provided.

Tell me about a time you gave up short-term gains for long-term benefits.