I applied through a recruiter. The process took four weeks.

The interview content is the most unconventional one that I've ever seen. The interview consists of:

• HR interview, like fifteen to twenty minutes.
• Manager screening, one hour, technical, with a few programming concepts questions.
• One live coding session, though very simple coding.
• Final round: one, language/programming concept; two, systems/services design; three, development process/working with PM-behavioral.

First off, the final rounds of the interview were different from what I was told by the HR. HR told me it would be system design, programming language concepts, and behavior, etc. But the questions that I got asked were like: what are TCP/UDP protocols? How do you deal with DB concurrency issues? How do you design a system where you read a file that's 100GB? How does the Linux kernel work? The list goes on.

Secondly, there's no behavioral round at all. All of them are technical. The so-called behavioral round became a system design interview, and you are expected to finish it in fifteen minutes. I mean it's okay, but there's just not enough time to ask questions and even explain my thought process clearly. After all, I don't think it's an interview that you can prepare for. The questions are just coming all over the place. There's apparently no clear focus on what they want to ask. I am not sure if what they asked is related to what they do on a daily basis.

I tried my best to answer all the questions. Since it's just some old concepts that I don't work with day to day, it doesn't mean that I don't understand them, but the way the questions were presented was very confusing and unorganized. If it is a concept or terminology that can be googled and comprehended easily, why bother asking? Even one of the interviewers admitted that he needed to google some of the answers to the questions that he asked me. It feels like they just ask questions randomly, and with entirely random questions asked, how are they going to ensure each one gets the correct level of assessment?

I thought I did well throughout the process, but looks like it's not. I asked HR to share some feedback, and the feedback was that I didn't meet their expectation and there are some gaps. As I anticipated, there's no clear feedback on your strengths or things to improve. It's just as generic as is since there's no clear measurement, and it's just very subjective. Not to mention that I wasn't even shared the job description and the expectation to begin with.

What are TCP and UDP protocols? How do you deal with a DB concurrency issue? How do you design a system where you read a file that is 100GB? How does the Linux kernel work?