The majority of the interview process was very professional and positive.

The recruiter kept me informed about the process and what to expect in each upcoming interview. The process was standard with recruiter chats up front, a first round with a coding problem and a project deep dive.

The onsite involved:

• Another (harder) coding problem
• A domain knowledge interview (another past project walkthrough)
• A system design interview
• A hiring manager fit/sell

The last step was a conversation with the director of the group. This was a very standard process for E6/Staff level.

The interviewers were all on time and well-prepared for their interviews. They were all a pleasure to speak with, happily answering questions at the end and even extending the time for questions when their schedules allowed. There was a longish delay after the onsite to gather feedback, but the process took a little over three weeks from start to offer.

The offer is where things took a profoundly negative turn. The offer was lower than what DoorDash had been paying for similar levels over the prior two years (even as the business was doing very well), despite the director stating I felt more like an E7 based on experience and performance.

I received all the usual excuses about "in this market" and "we've just changed how we handle offers." They also offered lots of selling about how the offer was still really good and the best they were "currently" giving, as if there was some mysterious hardship that suddenly caused them to start lowballing offers.

The final straw was that the delayed handling of the offer caused my start date to push past a vesting date, which substantially reduced year-one compensation. There was zero appetite to fix that, so I turned the offer down.

No specifics were given, but there were two coding questions in the loop:

one medium and one hard.

The DoorDash interview guide and DoorDash-tagged LeetCode questions should prepare you well.