It was pretty laid-back. They wanted to get to know me a bit and explained what to expect next, which helped ease some nerves.

The real challenge was the technical phone interview. They had me solve a couple of coding problems live on a shared doc, and honestly, I was a little nervous at first. But once I got into the groove, I just talked through my thinking while coding and tried not to overthink it. I made sure to test my solutions and explain why I did things a certain way.

A few days later, I had the onsite interviews, which were a marathon of sorts—4 or 5 rounds back-to-back. There were more coding problems, some system design questions, and a couple of behavioral chats where I talked about past projects and teamwork. The interviewers were friendly and asked good questions but kept things professional. It felt like a mix of figuring out if I had the skills and if I’d be a good fit culturally.

Tell me about a time you went against the status quo.