I got the opportunity through an internal referral.

I passed a technical phone screening and was invited to an on-site. I had five interviews in total:

• Two coding
• Two system design
• One with the manager (on PhD research + a quick coding exercise)

The technical questions were not too difficult, but I was unprepared for the system design problems. One of the interviewers kept walking around in the room, which was really distracting and annoying. I couldn't focus on solving the problem and didn't do well in that session.

The interviewing schedule was not ideal. I was scheduled to have lunch at 2 PM PST, but considering I'm from a couple of time zones east of PST, I was already far too hungry to have lunch at that time. Perhaps a low blood sugar level also contributed to my impaired thinking abilities.

Signed NDA.

Distributed system design problems were out of my expectation, as I do not claim any experience in that area, nor was I interviewing for any positions related to that area.