I was first contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn and scheduled for a 30-minute phone interview with a software engineer at AppLovin. The phone interview went well, covering both technical and non-technical questions. Afterward, I was scheduled for an on-site interview in Palo Alto to meet with the VP of Engineering and two software engineers.

To start, parking at this office is problematic. I had to park on the street with a 2-hour limit for a 3-hour interview. The receptionist informed me I could park in the last available spot in the lot. However, when I went to move my car, I discovered the receptionist had already let someone else take the last spot. I returned to street parking with its 2-hour limit, necessitating a break between interviews to move my car before the third one.

Following that, I was led directly to the conference room for my interviews without a chance to see the office (meaning I only saw one room during my entire 3-hour visit). The first interview with the VP of Engineering was technical and involved math. It wasn't overly difficult, but I was confused when I started answering an "language agnostic" question using pseudocode/logic, only to be questioned about which language I was using on the whiteboard and why it wasn't Objective-C.

The next two interviews were less challenging, though I felt the interviewers lacked a strong sense of when to offer hints or guide me toward a better understanding when I asked questions.

Overall, I didn't have a great experience, but it wasn't the worst interview I've ever had.

Some "CS101" style algorithm/data structures questions.

General Fibonacci question with a memoization approach.