The screening stage is an interview with Karat. It follows a standard format, similar to what's posted in other interview feedback. Expect about 5 system design questions, followed by a multi-part coding question where time and space complexity will be assessed. It seems you need to complete the first part of the coding question and make a start on the second. I felt unsure about my performance afterward, but apparently, I did pretty well. I think perhaps they are quite lenient on this one, as I was unsure about at least one of the system design questions and directly stated the wrong complexity for the coding question.

IMO, the issues start here. Atlassian's interview material for subsequent stages stresses the importance of clean code, writing tests, and communication. The Karat interview (at least the coding part) is the opposite of this; it's just about getting the right solution at all costs.

The next stage involved two coding interviews. The first was apparently 'Code design,' and I was given a variant of the Knapsack problem. Honestly, I'm not sure how this is meant to evaluate 'code design.' It's a straightforward recursive or DP solution that I couldn't recall within the allotted time. Brute force might have been acceptable; it's really hard to tell.

The second interview focused on data structures and algorithms. I overcomplicated things and also didn't perform well on this one. I managed to communicate the right solution after the interviewer helped me realize I was on the right path, but I didn't get much further than that.

It seemed like there might be a possibility of a down-level to Senior after my interview performance, but that didn't materialize.

Pros: My recruiter was very responsive and kept me informed and in the loop at every stage.

Cons: I think Atlassian needs to either be straightforward about the fact that they are just asking LeetCode questions or change their interview practices. My recruiter and some of their prep material, in my opinion, de-emphasized things like optimality and sort of implied, 'Well, the Karat interview is more LeetCode style, whereas the interviews with Atlassian are more 'real world'.' The implication was that there would be a focus on writing clean code and good unit tests. I don't think this is really accurate. The questions are straightforward LeetCode, they just have nice explanations to contextualize them and make them seem like 'real-world' problems. Perhaps I just got the wrong impression, but you can't say 'we're more interested in clean code and good tests' and then give me a question straight out of university CS, which would have been trivial if I had revised it in the last week and is quite tough otherwise.

To sum up, I think the process is well-run, and the questions are ultimately fair. I might have been misleveled at Principal, but I also feel like I would have prepped harder if Atlassian had just said, 'We do LeetCode-style interviews,' whereas I feel like they were trying to portray more of a 'We ask real-world type questions' approach.

Solve a variant of the Knapsack problem.

Take a stream of 'upvotes' and 'downvotes' on particular pieces of 'content', and then return the ID of the most 'upvoted' piece of content.