• 30-minute call with a Recruiter. We went through my previous experiences, and I answered questions like "Why Canva?" etc. This was followed by a few JavaScript theoretical questions and code snippets. I negotiated and fixed the salary on a lower side :(

• 1-hour call with an Engineer. This involved one simple JavaScript exercise.

• 3 hours total (3 technical rounds, 45 minutes each, and 1 Values round, 30 minutes).

I really enjoyed and felt I nailed my first two technical rounds and the values round. Everyone in these three rounds was very nice.

However, this third technical round was demotivating and the most unprofessional and negative interview experience of my life. There was a medium-level LeetCode-type question. I almost solved the question but got stuck at one point. As I was debugging, the interviewer started asking me some peculiar questions and gave me a bad look when I tried answering them. It genuinely seemed like they wanted me to fail (Canva's website states they want people to shine, not to fail). This made me so nervous that I failed to debug the problem.

Moreover, I came up with an O(1) space solution, but they wanted an O(n) space stack solution (the problem could be solved using both approaches). Who does that? I presented the optimized solution, and they wanted an unoptimized one? Lol. It was just a one-line mistake. Only one line. The interview ended, and it took me only two minutes to fix that issue afterward.

Result: Rejected, and the recruiter confirmed it was because of this third round. I mean, I was rejected because of just one line. I shared my thought process and explained my approach, but no. I got rejected because of that one line. The interviewer also told me earlier that it was completely okay if we weren't able to solve it completely, just to explain the approach. But no, they wanted the answer anyway. If there's a single line mistake, boom! You will be rejected. Furthermore, my solution was significantly more optimized than their expected solution.

Does this prove that I am not a good Frontend Engineer? I believe you were wrong. I have a strong DS/ALGO background and am a good Frontend Engineer. However, companies should realize that people do get nervous during interviews (especially because of these types of interviewers) and sometimes their solutions are better than the interviewer's solution.

Canva's interview process is quite broken (because of interviewers like this). That's why no local candidates work for them, and they always hire people from outside on Work Visas (I think a Work Visa is far worse than Australian PR – no benefits, nothing. Try getting a PR instead). Canva is a nice company, and I would love to apply again, but I'm unsure if I will because of such interviewers. You can read all other interview experiences here on Glassdoor. Almost everyone has had a negative experience.

People have already posted all the questions here (from all the rounds).