I applied online. The process took two weeks.

• A recruiter phone screen.
• A 90-minute codepair.
• A 60-minute system design.

The codepair problem is not too difficult. You design and implement something that represents a small service. The system design question, however, tries to cover way too much in too little time. My interviewer just copied and pasted in four product requirements and read them word for word. Designing the core engineering problem in itself is a lengthy thought process, weighing the capacity and thinking of a scalable system. Yet with no grasp on what the interviewer wanted in terms of scope and how broad the product requirements were, you end up not understanding some parts of what they want you to design, like which parts are considered an existing system and you can just make internal service calls, and which parts you're actually responsible for.

My system design interviewer was cold and super combative, silent when I seemed confused. Despite that, I did my best to cater to his concerns. The interviewers at this company should be trained to hop ideas back and forth, and make interviewing a collaborative experience, rather than drilling a person under pressure and time constraints.

Design a system with A/B experimentation as a function.