Very easy, but at the same time very dumb and stupid questions. They repeat the same questions for everyone, which doesn't make sense. Recruiter, coding challenge, onsite with 4 interviews: 1 coding, 2 system design, and then behavioral.

The recruiter reached out and gave me the REST API Assessment question, which is the same one given to everyone. I finished that in 3 hours. The task involved getting the data, processing it, and then sending it back. Following that, I scheduled my on-site interview.

1st Coding Interview:

This was presented as the easiest question ever asked for a Senior Software Engineer interview. The task was to merge two sorted arrays into a single sorted array, returning a result with a limited number of elements.

Example: i = [1, 3, 5] j = [2, 6, 8, 9] k = 4 return = [1, 2, 3, 5]

I solved it in about 15 minutes. The interviewer then asked me to make it work for all corner cases. I wrote code for all corner cases except one. For the last one, I had to look up syntax on Google (they clearly stated that Googling for syntax and similar was allowed). The interviewer then smirked and said, "Huh, you don't even know this?" He then asked if I had solved this question before, implying that I didn't truly understand the algorithm and had simply memorized the solution. My internal reaction was, "Bruh, do you realize that even a first-year undergraduate could solve this question?" It's a basic question to start with for anyone preparing for interviews. This was demotivating and rude. Based on the feedback, this is exactly why I was rejected. I feel this is the stupidest reason to reject someone – asking for a corner case, rejecting if syntax is forgotten, and on top of that, insulting and insinuating that the solution was memorized. I mean, what the hell?

2nd Database System:

I was asked to design a simple social network backend. This involved designing tables and writing a query to retrieve the news feed of all your friends and your own posts. Likes and similar features were not a concern. The focus was on creating relational database tables, optimizing them, and retrieving information quickly. The instruction was not to worry about creating too many tables; basic design was expected, with the interviewer expecting to dive deeper into it.

I did okay on this, based on the feedback.

3rd System Design:

The topic was a URL shortening service.

I did really well on this.

4th Behavioral Round with Hiring Manager:

This was pretty straightforward, like any other behavioral round.

I did good on this as well.

The recruiter was awesome! She was helpful, prompt in responding, and very responsive. She was amazing and quickly provided feedback as soon as possible. 10/10 for her responses and timeliness.