The interview process was quite standard, involving a phone round and an onsite schedule with five interviews plus lunch.

1. Phone Round: The phone round was of average difficulty, with questions primarily from LeetCode. The only issue was an interviewer who insisted on their approach, even though my method offered better time and space complexity. This was regarding a "Nested List Sum" question and its reverse. I had to extensively explain why my code was superior and more efficient, which an interviewer should have identified much earlier.

2.1 Onsite Hiring Manager Interview: This was straightforward. We discussed various topics, including my past projects and the interviewer's last project. Towards the end, I was given a problem they had solved five years prior to assess my approach. Overall, it was a very helpful interview.

2.2 Technical Communication: This interview was also straightforward. I was asked to present one of my best projects, one that I could clearly explain and answer any questions about.

2.3 Lunch: The lunch was smooth. (Their cafeteria's quality is superior to Google's and Facebook's!!)

2.4 Code Round 1: This is where the negative experiences began. One interviewer seemed junior, and the other senior. The junior interviewer decided to lead with a medium-level LeetCode question, "Expression Operators." The issues encountered were: * The interviewer didn't know how to solve the question and resorted to looking up the solution on LeetCode to check my answer. * They were unwilling to consider my approach because they didn't understand it (they were extremely unprepared). * The two interviewers were not listening to my answers; instead of constructive feedback, it felt like a "You are wrong!" type of interview. * They asked me to optimize the code, which was already optimized to the core. They seemed to expect a 4^n solution with a time complexity less than 4^n. They did not grasp this and continued until one of them finally understood and admitted, "This is the most optimized one." However, the other interviewer hadn't heard this and insisted that I had not optimized the code properly. (Alert: Unpreparedness!)

2.5 Design Interview: The interviewer was very helpful and genuinely interested in understanding my approach, which seemed rare based on other interview experiences on LinkedIn.

2.6 Coding Round 2: Both engineers were very cool. One question was a hard-level LeetCode problem, "Find K Closest Elements in BST," which becomes challenging when aiming for improved time complexity. The other was finding the square root of any number, including decimals.

I received a rejection response from my recruiter within three days, citing, "I couldn't optimize the code in my first coding round." Duh! I sent an email to my recruiter detailing the unpreparedness of the interviewers. She replied that nothing could be done as the decision was final but assured me they would ensure this doesn't happen again. (Based on other interviews, it doesn't seem like they act on feedback).

In summary: The recruiter was great, prompt, and the process was smooth. However, the actual interviews felt heavily reliant on luck, which I dislike. If the company improves the interviewers' training and preparedness, their chances of hiring the right talent would significantly increase. The company itself had a healthy atmosphere. Unfortunately, the unpreparedness and lack of engagement from the interviewers dashed my dream of joining LinkedIn.

Nested list sum? (Both regular and reverse)

Closest K nodes to a target in BST? (Do it in O(n)?)

Square root of a number?

Expression operators: Add signs to a string to form target (All 4 signs: +, -, *, /)

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