A few weeks after submitting my resume at a conference, I was contacted by a LinkedIn HR representative. He was enthusiastic and clearly loved his job, which initially piqued my interest in working for LinkedIn.

I had one phone interview, which was pleasant and went well. About a week later, I was invited to attend a LinkedIn Invitational. I gathered this is LinkedIn's new approach to the grueling, all-day interview process.

Basically, I arrived at the LinkedIn office with about fifteen other Software Engineering candidates (all new grads, like me) to participate in an all-day event. This included:

• Four hour-long, one-on-one interviews (three technical, one management)
• Q&A sessions with a group of recent hires, the Director of Engineering, and the CEO himself
• A campus tour
• A fancy dinner in San Francisco

LinkedIn put us up in a great hotel in downtown San Francisco that night. I gladly took the opportunity to spend the rest of the night on the town with the other candidates (it was a Friday, after all).

Overall, the experience was overwhelmingly positive. How could I not want to work for LinkedIn after that? Especially after talking to so many current LinkedIn employees who clearly loved their jobs and were genuinely excited to talk to us candidates. If a company cares so much about treating not just their employees well, but even their candidates well, I think it bodes well for a future career with them.

A week later, my HR representative contacted me again to offer me a job. The offer included a very good salary and a hefty relocation bonus, as well as stock options, great benefits, and a free CalTrain pass, among other things. It took about two seconds to decide I was going to take the job.

How would you design Amazon.com?

Program an iterator for a Linked List which may include nodes that are nested within other nodes. For example:

(1) -> (2) -> (3(4)) -> ((5)(6))

The iterator should return 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6.