Okay, I think everyone else was right. Take this review as a summary of the other 38 reviews for the same role at the time of my interview. I interviewed on April 25th. I am from a Tier 1 university with an "okaish" profile and switch jobs every two years. The interview experience was neutral.

First of all, the interviewer was communicative, unlike what was mentioned in other reviews. He did seem interested in what I was saying. However, I'm not a huge fan of the interviewer's approach.

I've worked as a Principal Engineer in other companies, so I expect interviewees to back everything they say, but never to be perfect. Following are the "perfectionist" points expected, as per feedback from HR:

• I didn't give the proper response (meaning I returned 'SUCCESS' instead of 'true' in the API response). That's quite silly, honestly.
• When querying a database, I explained we needed to update a row. However, it actually required me to make another row update simultaneously. I initially didn't mention the second update, but once the interviewer nudged me, I explained the importance of it and the concept of two-phase commit. This became a negative point instantly.

Result: I was down-leveled to Senior Software Engineer immediately (as seen in other reviews). Honestly, I wasn't expecting much, so I didn't feel bad. I did clear the round, if that makes any difference.

Epilogue: Just like other reviews, I know we all want the Principal role because it's high-paying, obviously. But don't bank on this interview. If you're answering picture-perfectly, perhaps GPT is answering for you, then you might clear. Otherwise, expect to be down-leveled.

So, take your chance and prepare your questions well.

The first round was System Design, and as expected, it turned out to be API design.

However, I got unlucky and received a question I hadn't prepared for. My prepared topics included:

• Tagging system
• Color picker
• Rate limiter
• YouTube view counter
• Web crawler
• Job scheduler

Instead, I was asked about a File System. I initially thought this type of question was for the System Coding round, but that was my bad luck.