The interview consisted of two rounds on the same day: a coding round followed by a project deep dive.

The project deep dive was behavioral. The interviewer delved into one of your projects, and you were expected to discuss challenges faced and how you resolved them.

The coding experience was quite negative. The interviewer seemed narrowly focused, proficient only in Java and some Python, and resistant to other languages. When asked if it was a LeetCode-style problem, the interviewer stated it was not, leading you to believe you could use any object-oriented language. However, it turned out to be a LeetCode problem. This was very confusing. The interviewer expected the code to be structured according to Java object-oriented principles. You expressed a preference for focusing on the solution rather than upfront structure. It was a LeetCode Hard problem, and you nearly finished it at the last minute. Unfortunately, the interviewer did not allocate the final few minutes for questions. In the remaining minute, they were still asking questions like, "How is a HashMap internally implemented?" By this time, the next interviewer had already joined.

Overall, it felt like the interviewer was not properly trained and lacked subjective measures to judge a candidate.

One of the trie problems on LeetCode.