The interview process starts with an HR screen, before proceeding to a first-round code screen. The exercise wasn't terribly difficult, but you are on a time crunch. My interviewer was nice, but I feel like towards the end they led me down the wrong path.

I just really don't like these live coding interviews where you have to get the question right and you're tested on "collaboration." Can you even truly test collaboration when the interviewer already knows the answer? In the end, I feel like I was close, but stumbled due to anxiety about wanting to make it to the next round.

I recommend just relaxing and hopefully you are good at solving problems while someone stares at you and maybe gives not-so-helpful hints. It's also telling that probably most of the people who are here probably got the same question, yet got rejected after the first round. I doubt it is due to true incompetence.

Debugging of messy code exercise.