The interview process is as follows:

• Non-technical phone interview
• Technical phone interview with Karat
• Onsite

I only reached the technical phone interview stage. I was interviewing for Palantir New York. The interviewer was super nice, and we got along really well. Too bad I didn't make it to the onsite!

For the technical phone interview:

First, they ask you about your experience and projects to break the ice. Next, I had a series of general programming knowledge questions, such as "X is trying to solve Problem P, and doing it this way: blablabla... What is he doing wrong?"

The last part of the interview was LeetCode easy-type questions. The first one was really easy to solve; the second was a bit less trivial, as it involved merging small lists into a single contiguous one. I got stuck on part of the algorithm but still managed to solve it in time.

In the end, I thought I did well since I finished both problems and correctly answered the questions before, but I got a rejection email a week later. I think this is what sets Palantir and companies like it apart from others: they don't want you to do well, they want you to do perfectly. More specifically, you are expected to answer non-hard questions quickly and without stumbling, at least in my experience.

If you are reading this because you have an interview with them, don't panic, and make sure you're prepared enough so that you quickly arrive at a solution for any type of LeetCode easy-medium question.