I started with a technical phone screen featuring two problems. One was a LeetCode Easy, and the other was a version of implementing an LRU cache. The problems were pretty easy, and the interviewers were nice and seemed smart. I then moved on to the onsite interviews.

There were five interviews at the onsite level: two coding interviews, one with a hiring manager, one system design interview, and one project overview.

The coding problems were significantly harder in person than they were on the phone screen. I don't know why they would do that. What drove me crazy is that I had a working answer (similar to the interviewer's, but not exactly what he wanted), and he wouldn't allow me to code it. He kept trying to point me to his solution. I thought the point of a good engineer is that we can come up with solutions on our own. I think that kind of interview process speaks poorly to their culture.

The second coding interviewer wasn't paying attention. I described my algorithm and started coding, and he began correcting my syntax. However, he was correcting it to a different language. Then he said, 'Well, we don't use that here...' Okay, I thought the point was that the interview is language-agnostic. This happened in the phone screen as well (he asked me to code in Java). After I explained that I wasn't using Java, he stopped paying attention altogether. He just browsed something on his computer (scrolling and scrolling, with occasional clicks – kind of like how you would use Reddit). I said I was done. He ignored me. I said it louder, and he finally looked up. Then it took him forever to catch up. He seemed very skeptical of my solution. I looked up the problem later, and my answer was the top-rated on LeetCode, so shrug. I had never seen that problem before.

I was very turned off by people insisting LinkedIn is a 'financially stable startup.' LinkedIn IPO'd years and years ago, and they were bought out over a year ago. One of the guys who explained he had only worked at startups said he didn't realize how political and red-taped big companies are. I'm guessing there's an internal push to claim they are a startup.

Only one interviewer was a real jerk (the guy who didn't pay attention), but I don't think I would interview there again. There is a lot of ego.

Deserialize and Serialize a Binary Tree.

Find all palindromic subsequences.