The online HackerRank assessment was very easy. I was given 3 hours to solve two classic CS problems and was able to solve both, check them, and even add comments to the code, with 2.5 hours still to spare.

The phone interview was bad. The interviewer was Chinese and could barely speak coherent English. Audio quality was also terrible, as it was an international phone call. They asked a few OS questions, then a main coding question. I started solving the coding question optimally, but the interviewer kept telling me my solution was 'wrong,' when what they really meant was they wanted a simpler, less-efficient solution. This led to a lot of confusion.

Somehow, I passed and went to the onsite interview. The questions seemed reasonable, but not enough time was given to solve them, even though I knew the solutions. Additionally, I was given a MacBook with awkwardly spaced keys, unfamiliar key shortcuts, and no mouse, so I was constantly making typos or struggling to use the Mac-style touchpad.

I am not happy with the overall process; it seemed a lot more luck-based than skill-based.

• Maximum subarray sum of a circular array

• Implement LRU cache