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Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience

March 1, 2019
Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I was recommended by a friend currently working there.

I received a phone call and was provided a link to solve a coding problem.

The phone call disconnected several times during the interview. The interviewer spoke to me as if my answer would always be incorrect, regardless of what I said. I provided a working answer to the question, but he was seeking a more optimal solution. My answer was O(n), and he wanted O(log n). I believe there is no actual O(log n) solution for the question, as the worst-case scenario would still be O(n).

That was the entirety of the interview – a single coding problem.

At the beginning, he asked about my past jobs, but I could tell he wasn't interested. He kept sighing, as if he just wanted me to finish that part of the interview.

He continuously offered hints on how to answer the question according to his expectations, not allowing me to develop my own solution. After the interview, I was able to answer the question, but by no means was it the solution he expected. Therefore, I assume it wouldn't have been good enough for him.

I never received a call or email back after the interview, not even from HR.

Questions

Given an array of numbers, e.g., [1, 3, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9], create a function that returns the indices of a target number.

For example, if the target is 8 for the array mentioned before, return [4, 5].

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 50 interview experiences for the PayPal Senior Software Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

18%
Pass Rate

PayPal's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in the United States is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive28%
Neutral26%
Negative46%

Candidates reported having negative feelings for PayPal's Senior Software Engineer interview process in United States.

PayPal Work Experiences