There were three rounds, all of which took place within two hours.

• 1st Round: Code Review - Took only half an hour.
• 2nd Round: Recruiter - Half an hour.
• 3rd Round: System Design - One hour.

The code review round was okay. I did not see many counter-questions or in-depth technical discussions. It was smooth.

The recruiter round was almost unnecessary because the recruiter had been talking to me since the start of the process and already had most of the answers. This round was just a repetition and, in short, a time waste. Had it been with the hiring manager, I would have gotten to know more about the team and the work being done.

The third round was the most robotic round ever. There were two managers, out of which one manager did not talk at all throughout the interview except for asking one last database-related question. Most likely, they were a shadow interviewer.

I tried to talk to them to know what kind of answer they were looking for and asked various system design initial questions about usage, scalability, etc. All I got was a blank expression and silence.

HLD interviews are basically known to be open-ended, and it is expected to be a two-way discussion about what can work and what the failure points might be. This interview was not at all like that. They were just expecting a perfect system without anything being missed and without even giving their perspective.

The interviewers did not even ask anything about my background, what I have done till now, or how I have tackled similar system design questions throughout my experience. No such conversation ever happened.

Overall, not a very positive interview. Everything seemed mechanical.

Code review & HL system design