The Hiring Manager approached me on LinkedIn and showed interest in my profile. He shared good things about his team, and I agreed to an interview as it aligned with my interests.

Had a technical round with a team member. He asked a medium LeetCode question involving recursion. The solution is not as lengthy as is often the case with recursion problems.

I first discussed non-optimized solutions, and he inquired about the memory and time costs, which I explained. He then asked me to improve the solution, which I did iteratively, first for time and then for memory. I wrote the straightforward code. There wasn't much discussion on it.

He then moved on to my current projects and experience, asking some counter-questions. That was it.

The recruiter ghosted me. I suspected I hadn't passed, but I wanted to receive feedback. After a couple of emails and weeks, the recruiter contacted me with the feedback, which was disappointing.

• My approach to the problem required nudges from the interviewer and was not perfect from the start.
• The code was not up to the mark. The simple recursion code, which he didn't discuss further, was deemed okay.
• My experience was not up to their requirements. My QPS did not match their system's needs. This could have been discussed earlier in the exploratory call, saving time.

I am happy that I did not proceed with this company.

It is not a small company and should invest in training people for interviews.

Medium LeetCode Recursion Question