I was approached on LinkedIn by a recruiter. After an initial call, they suggested three teams I could choose from. I made my choice, and we proceeded.

My first interview (I believe it was a phone screen round) was fairly easy. It involved a LeetCode easy array problem, and later a tree problem that simply required a Breadth-First Traversal (BFT) or Depth-First Traversal (DFT) with a counter.

Next, they scheduled a «virtual onsite». This included one coding interview, again with an easy problem. The task was to count the maximum number of simultaneous meetings needed. Initially, I had an incorrect approach and implemented it. Later, the interviewer pointed out an example where my code would be incorrect. I quickly fixed it, and we discussed testing and other related topics.

Combined with the phone screen, these interactions involved some really nice people, I would say.

Later the same day, I had a system design interview. I was tasked with designing an alerts system that notifies users about stock price changes, considering a large volume of alerts. Honestly, compared to their coding questions, this one wasn't presented ideally. There was no text to refer to, no context provided. I was told to “not think about load” and to “draw an overview”, but then the interviewers delved into specifics before I was finished.

During this interview, I felt the strongest communication barrier. This was also the first interview where I didn’t particularly connect with an interviewer, even though they were supposedly from the exact team I was interviewing for.

Within a couple of hours, I received a rejection. Overall, I'm not too disappointed because I didn't feel it was the right fit at this point.

I also caught a glimpse of the office in the background of some interviewers' screens, and it looked rather dull and not modern. Perhaps it was just certain rooms; I'm not sure.

Count maximum concurrent meetings to calculate the number of meeting rooms needed.