The hiring bar is pretty high and the process is long. You may not get an offer if you don’t pass even one of the interviews, or even if you do pass them.

LC questions were standard, and you are expected to pass all test cases, which can be challenging. If you finish one LC hard, they will ask you another one, lol. It's sort of relentless.

On the system design, I had a terrible interview. The interviewer didn’t know whether it was a domain knowledge or a system design question to begin with. It was a system design interview. She kept cutting me off and was kind of rude, and didn’t really let me finish or deep dive. Good luck if she is your interviewer!

The other rounds were great, and the interviewers were respectful. I had positive conversations with the rest of the team. My final interview, the interviewer stayed back an extra 15-20 minutes to discuss some of the interesting projects and cool stuff he had worked on! It was super nice of him.

Overall, the system design probably cost me. I have no regrets; it was a bit of a broken process, and I am not really sure if it’s worth applying here for higher roles unless you have a FANG-like company on your resume and luck out on some of the interviewers.

Good luck!

Standard LC, DFS, dynamic programming, and system design questions