1. An Atlassian recruiter approached me. We scheduled a Karat interview, and I took the test.

2. The Karat interview format was as follows. 60 minutes total: 5 minutes for introductions, 25 minutes for 5 system design questions, and 30 minutes for two programming questions. Yes, CRAZY!

3. I failed my first Karat interview. The reason was a failure on Karat and Atlassian to set expectations. The interviewer and Atlassian expected 6-7 examples for each system design question, but neither failed to inform me of this. The interviewer was pushing to move to the next question because he needed to ask all questions within the allotted time (poor guy was just doing his job and following the format he had been trained to do).

4. I redid the Karat interview, as they allow one redo. This time, I did not let the interviewer move to the next system design question until I had provided good, detailed, quality answers. Next came the coding round. Karat states in their FAQ, "don't spend time gold-plating your solution," and that they "assess on code completion." So I did both, but they rejected me based on the coding round this time by nit-picking on code quality (aka not gold-plated).

I believe Atlassian is looking for speed programmers who can work in a high-pressure environment, and that is a huge red flag for me.

Advice to Atlassian: Extend the interview by 30 minutes. Cover 2 high-quality system design questions in 30 minutes and one coding question in the remaining time. Please focus on quality rather than quantity. Allow candidates time to gold-plate if that is what you are looking for.

Advice to Karat: You are going to lose business if you do not push back to Atlassian and improve the interview process.

The questions are not based on LeetCode, so don't waste time on that.

Just do some easy and medium questions to get in practice, and you should be fine.