I applied online for the PayPal Senior Developer role.

The first round was a HackerRank test. The questions were average (not too easy, not too tough).

The second round was a programming round with an interviewer, focusing on Data Structures and Algorithms. They asked a few questions on circular linked lists, queues, and dynamic programming.

The third round was an extended programming round. One question involved recursion, and the next was on binary trees, specifically finding the length between two nodes.

Both of these technical interview rounds were fine, and the interviewers were approachable.

The next round was a system design round. This is where things turned. The interviewer severely lacked communication, and I couldn't understand him properly. He gave me a design question: design Dropbox. The whole interview seemed like one-sided communication; he didn't even interrupt me. Then, out of the blue, after some time, he changed the question to design an autocomplete feature. When I started designing it using a trie, he then asked me to code it. After that, he asked me to send the design elements as screenshots to his email (without providing his email address). Then he left.

Overall, it was a negative experience.

1. Recursion

2. Find the length of nodes between a binary tree.

3. Design Dropbox