Overall, the process was organized. It is obvious that the recruiters are overwhelmed and are having trouble keeping up with the volume of applicants. The process took a few weeks.

First, I received an email from a recruiter to talk about the position. They asked for availability but then did not confirm anything. After several days, I finally received an invite to do the phone interview.

The phone interview was straightforward for a screening. I was told to look for an email for a coding assessment.

I ended up not hearing anything. I attempted to follow up via email to the recruiter but did not hear a response. After several days (about 5), I received an email from the recruiter, and they said they thought they created the assessment link but did not. I received the invite that evening.

The assessment was simple, and I completed it in the expected amount of time.

About a week later, I then heard from the recruiter to complete the virtual interviews.

After scheduling, the recruiter gave me a rundown of what to expect, and it appears to be pretty much the same as most of these other reviews.

Interview Day

First Interview - Coding (2 people interviewing me) Started off well, and we introduced ourselves. It probably took a little longer because two people were interviewing me and gave me their backgrounds and what they do at the company. I felt we had a good conversation there. The technical question: BE WARNED - even though they claim not to be big on LeetCode in their blogs, they are. If you can't solve it EXACTLY the way they expect, you are not "technical" enough. I did not realize this and first solved it as simply as possible, talking through it every step of the way. Based on the feedback, I did not solve it correctly.

• I was not given much opportunity to talk about any of my past projects & accomplishments to demonstrate my technical ability.
• I was only given about 5 minutes to ask my questions to them.

Second Interview - Database Started off again with the interviewer talking about themselves and all the great things they have done, what the team does, etc. I felt we had a great conversation, and we shared laughs. The technical question was simple and the same as everyone else here: design a DB for a Facebook feed. I tried to keep it as simple as possible, as that's what all the blog posts and interview prep articles claim to say. Based on the feedback, I was too simple and didn't solve any edge cases. I was not told to solve for edge cases. At one point, the interviewer had said it appeared I had everything covered. I'm not quite sure what I did wrong.

• I was given little time to ask questions again.
• The interviewer did not give much opportunity to elaborate on my past experience, just wanted me to solve the question.

Third Interview - System Design Started off with the same as the other two, then we went into the design question: design a Bit.ly service. In my opinion, we got a little too granular for system design as the interviewer began asking questions about details on how a particular method would work. I kept it simple and did not get into distributed systems much because, as mentioned before, all over HubSpot blogs it was recommended to keep things simple. They asked how I would handle load balancing, and I showed a simple load balancer design. Based on the feedback, this was not enough, and I didn't "solve for the customer." However, we did finish early because the interviewer felt I sufficiently solved the problem (even though the feedback indicated the opposite).

• I was not given much time to ask questions afterward, as the interviewer was eager to end early and "give me extra time" for a break.
• I was not given much opportunity to talk about my past experience to sufficiently demonstrate my technical ability.

Final Interview: Manager Very nice person; I felt it was my favorite person to talk to. We shared stories, and I was able to talk about my past experience in detail. This interviewer was the only one who gave positive feedback. We had lots of questions back and forth.

After the interview, I was told I would find out in a couple of days. I did not. I attempted to follow up, but I was not responded to until about a week later.

From what I understand, the recruiter did not follow up with the interview panel until the day I was contacted and informed I would not be receiving an offer.

The feedback was that I was not technical enough.

Some Advice

• Every technical interviewer was no more than 5 years post-college and either Senior or Team Lead. Maybe find more "seasoned" engineers to determine technical ability.
• If recruiters are busy, please have them respond to applicants so they know they are not forgotten and that the recruiter is busy. Being ghosted isn't fun (especially for a company that claims to be big on empathy).
• Solving some of these items in 15-20 minutes without memorization can be difficult. Have a little more empathy here.

Return the lowest n elements in order from two sorted arrays.

[1,3,5,7] [2,4,6,8] [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

Design a database for Facebook News Feed using your database of choice.

Design a Bit.ly service using your database of choice.