I learned about Redfin through a referral from a friend at Amazon. Shortly after, I discovered a similar role posted on my school's job board and applied there instead.

A recruiter contacted me to schedule a 60-minute first technical phone screen, which focused on coding questions. The interviewer was very courteous, and we connected well. The questions involved implementing the Fibonacci algorithm recursively, iteratively, and with memoization.

Following the phone screen, I was invited to the onsite portion of the interview process, which took place in Seattle. I was flown to Seattle the day before the interviews, stayed at the Warwick hotel, and flew out the day after.

The interview day began at 10 am with two 45-minute sessions before a 1.5-hour lunch with two software developers. The first 45-minute interview was a coding question. While I solved it, I may have taken too long to code the solution, as we ran out of time for my questions at the end. The second interview was with a Program Manager, described by the developers at lunch as a "rock star." This session was a design problem, and I enjoyed the challenge of designing a front-end solution.

After lunch, there were two more 45-minute interviews. The first was another coding question, this time concerning string pattern matching. I struggled initially but found a clear path to the solution, and the implementation proceeded smoothly afterward.

The final interview was with the director of engineering. He was very passionate about his work and his team's projects, and he effectively answered my "bigger picture" questions. The work culture appeared excellent, with comprehensive training available for all engineers, emphasizing a well-rounded skillset for onboarding new team members. I felt quite excited and hoped I was skilled enough.

I believe I overestimated my performance, as I was informed that while my values aligned well with the company's, my technical skills were lacking. Technical interviews can be unpredictable; I was certainly a bit jet-lagged from my travel from the East Coast to Seattle.

Find out if any substring of A is a substring of B.