The first-round interview was a 60-minute Zoom call. The first 15 minutes comprised behavioral questions, and the last 45 minutes were technical.

On the technical portion, I received the balanced delimiters question, which involved a stack implementation. They emphasized focusing on edge cases.

I initially thought the only delimiters were '(', '{', and '['. However, the interviewer wanted me to use a hashmap to store all possible theoretical "delimiters," which is where I made a mistake.

I received the balanced delimiters question, which involves stack implementation. The interviewer really wanted me to focus on edge cases. I initially thought the only delimiters were '(', '{', and '['. However, the interviewer wanted me to use a hashmap to store all possible theoretical delimiters, and that's where I made a mistake.