I applied online near the end of August. The company responded about two weeks later to schedule a phone interview, which was set for about a week after that.

During the phone interview, the interviewer asked a standard question. I coded the solution online, likely on a HackerRank platform. Although I thought they preferred C++, he offered me the choice of Java, which I accepted as I am more comfortable with it. I don't believe this choice negatively impacted my chances.

That coding question went well, followed by a few follow-up questions about scalability and potential bugs. The interviewer then transitioned to specific C++ questions. I struggled with these, as I had only taken one semester of C++.

Despite this, I passed the phone interview and advanced to the in-house stage. About a week later, my recruiter asked me to choose from three days to travel to NYC for the interview. Travel arrangements were made a few days after that.

The in-house interview began with a brief tour of the office. Afterward, I met with the interviewers in a conference room. The questions were again standard, and I had to complete them on paper.

During the first interview, two engineers posed three technical questions. I blanked out, especially on the first question, despite its relative simplicity. The second interview involved a single interviewer who asked a straightforward question. I answered it immediately, and he indicated that was all he had. We then spoke briefly before the interview concluded.

The interviews themselves lasted about two hours in total, with a short break in between.

A week later, I received a rejection. This was not entirely unexpected, given my performance on the first interview.

The C++ specific things really threw me off. Other than that, everything was very standard.