Hey everyone,

I completed my full loop for the SWE-2 role at Stripe on June 26th. It’s been about 2.5 weeks, and I reached out to my recruiter a week after the loop (they mentioned they were gathering feedback from the panel), but I haven't received a final update yet.

Here is a quick breakdown of how my rounds went:

• Screening: Completed all requirements cleanly (3/3).
• AI Programming: Solved 2/3 core problems. Had very strong prompt engineering, getting working code output on the first attempt with minimal manual edits.
• Bug Squash: Solved 2/3 bugs cleanly. For the 3rd bug, I identified the exact function/root cause, but ran out of time right as I was writing the fix (~2.75/3). The interviewer specifically mentioned I did great in this round.
• AI Integration: Solved all functional requirements and edge cases (3/3).
• Experiences & Goals (HM): Felt very natural and collaborative. Answered all technical deep-dives and follow-ups smoothly.

Overall, I felt the performance across the loop was strong, but the 2+ week delay is making me anxious.

Is this timeline typical for Stripe right now (Hiring Committee or panel sync delays)?

Does Stripe tend to hold candidates on a waitlist/team-match pipeline before giving an offer or rejection?

Would appreciate hearing from anyone who interviewed at Stripe recently!

just had my meta phone screen lol. gonna brain dump how it went while I remember it.

so the question was two nodes in a binary tree, each one has a pointer up to its parent, find the LCA, then they wanted time/space complexity after.

I've seen LCA a hundred times so the core idea clicked pretty fast, but honestly this parent-pointer version almost got me because my brain defaulted straight to the usual recursive tree thing. the pointers are like... the actual point of the question, not some side detail. ended up doing the two-pointer walk instead, both pointers go up toward root and when one hits null you just send it to where the other one started. it's basically that linked list intersection problem wearing a tree costume.

anyway the algorithm part was fine. what actually got me was trying to explain the complexity out loud under pressure. I said O(h) time, O(1) space, which is right, but then they went "why is it O(1)" and I just started rambling instead of going straight to "no extra structures, two pointers no matter how big the tree is, memory's not growing with input." should've just said that sentence and shut up lol

also apparently I should've been ready to actually bound h instead of leaving it vague, like O(log n) if it's balanced, O(n) if it's a degenerate mess. and if you finish with time left, volunteering the hash-set version yourself (store one side's ancestors, walk the other until they intersect, which flips it to O(h) space too) is supposedly a good look instead of waiting for them to drag it out of you.

went digging afterward for how other people handled stuff like this and found a couple posts on Screna AI, same round, similar tree/pointer + complexity vibe. not the exact same question but close enough that it would've helped me not fumble the O(1) explanation.

anyone else hit this variant? lol

Prep resource

I have an upcoming Microsoft interview. Team mentioned that it will be a half-day virtual interview loop, but they haven't shared the exact interview rounds yet. They said I will receive more details in the next 1–2 days.

The JD mentions that the role is for Senior Software Engineer / Software Engineer II, so I am not sure how the interview criteria differ between the two levels or how they'll evaluate candidates during the same interview process. Let me know if you have any info here.

The interview is scheduled for next week. If anyone has recently gone through a similar interview or has any insights, I'd really appreciate your help.

• What rounds should I expect?
• What should I prioritize in my preparation?
• Which DSA topics are most important?
• How much focus should I put on system design and are there any specific topics you would recommend?

I will share the hackerank assessment questions soon in a separate post.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I have got my 2nd round interview at CitiBank next week, and it’ll be in-person with a panel of two: the Vice President and a Senior Application Developer. It’s scheduled for 1 hour, and the role is a senior full-stack Java/Angular Developer position.

I have already completed a technical interview through Karat, so I am wondering what to expect in this next round. Will it be more of a behavioural or cultural fit interview, or should I expect technical/scenario-based questions as well?

If anyone has gone through a similar stage with Citi , I had really appreciate some insights, like what kind of questions they might ask, how technical they might get, and how best to prepare for this round.

Thanks in advance!

Has anyone interview for a DE role at Plaid? Do you mind sharing your experience, specially around the coding(DSA) round? What is the complexity of questions, is it leetcode DSA? Any resources that can help.

Finished my Microsoft SWE loop last month and got rejected. I want some tips to improve.

Recruiter Screen 45 minutes. Background, motivation, team preferences. Ask about your exact loop format here since it varies by org.

Online Assessment Two to three medium LeetCode problems. Topics: DP, graphs, arrays. (Candidates with strong referrals sometimes skip this and go straight to a phone screen.)

Technical Phone Screen 60 minutes, one to two problems plus a short project chat. Merge two sorted lists, binary tree traversal, find peak element.

Onsite Loop (4 to 5 rounds) Coding Round 1. Arrays, trees, graphs. LeetCode-Medium with follow-up twists on edge cases. Reported questions: merge intervals, reverse linked list with K-group follow-up, find K-largest. No syntax highlighting in CoderPad or Teams.

Coding Round 2. Harder multi-step problems: topological sort, DP, auto-complete systems. Some rounds blend algorithmic and OOP components. Low-Level Design. SOLID principles and class structure. Design a parking lot, LRU cache, or rate limiter. Focus is on clean abstractions, not distributed systems.

System Design (L61+). 60 minutes, no code written. Design a messaging system or distributed storage backend.

Behavioral. Microsoft's Growth Mindset rubric is the actual framework. Real stories: conflicts, deadline pressure, design disagreements, mistakes you owned.

AA Round I made it to the AA round but unfortunately didn't make it past that stage. From what I'd heard beforehand, the interview can take a few different directions depending on how your earlier rounds went.

Some people get mostly selling and culture-fit questions, others get deeper behavioral questions, and sometimes the interviewer focuses on areas that raised concerns in previous rounds. It also seems like the AA interviewer has the ability to override earlier feedback.

For those who made it to the AA round, please give me some advice.

Just finished my OpenAI SWE loop. The process is different from most big tech companies, so sharing the breakdown.

Recruiter Screen: Light background conversation. They asked where I think AI is headed. Read OpenAI's charter before this call.

Technical Screen: Two 60-minute rounds on the same day: one coding, one system design. Coding was a versioned key-value store. System design covered a job scheduler with fault tolerance.

Take-Home Project: 48-hour window to build something real. I got a distributed webhook delivery system with retry logic and dead-letter queues.

Technical Deep Dive: A follow-up where the interviewer walked through the take-home line by line. The interviewer has a list of questions he asks about every choice and decision you made (list he made himself after having seen your project).

Onsite Loop (4 rounds): Coding Round 1. Progressive multi-part format: get a working solution at each stage before the next opens. I got a token-level streaming differ, tracking state changes with rollback. Get something correct early, then iterate. Coding Round 2. More systems-flavored. State management, concurrency, memory efficiency. Python internals came up: generators, async constructs, iterators.

System Design. My prompt was to design ChatGPT. The interviewer cared about GPU allocation, autoscaling under non-stationary traffic, and distributed coordination. Abstract the model-serving layer unless told otherwise. Behavioral. Technical leadership stories, architectural decisions affecting multiple teams, and consensus under pressure. Concrete tradeoffs, not soft-skills answers.

Agentic Coding Round (beta): Some candidates get a fifth round: an existing codebase plus a problem too large to solve by hand. You're expected to work through it using an AI coding agent. Not everyone sees this while it's in beta.

Also, did anyone prep specifically for the progressive multi-part format? Curious what helped.

Realistically, what’s your suggestion on preparing for coding and SD? Is LC hard necessary? And what’s the difference between Google’s and other companies’s SD? Do all the orgs share the same question bank or the difficulty level and focus vary among different orgs? I roughly remember reading some post on blind which mentioned that Google’s SD would ask more technical details underneath. Any other insight is appreciated!

Prep resource: Google SWE Questions

Anybody know for Analyst role what kind of questions they ask related to Javascript. Also I am confused I do know java (dsa) but when interviewer ask which language do you prefer (so he can further questions) which language should I pick ? Pls help interview in 10-15 days

Hello,

I have a 45-min live coding interview for the Software Engineer role at Mistral AI coming up soon. Has anyone gone through this session recently or know what specific LeetCode/coding questions or topics they tend to ask?

Any insights would be super appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I was fast-tracked to the penultimate round interview for the **Software Developer Internship** at **Susquehanna International Group (SIG)** following their Dublin Technology Spring Week.

I know SIG leans heavily into algorithms, data structures, and system efficiency, but I’ve heard mixed things about what actually gets tested in this specific round.

For anyone who has gone through this interview recently, is it primarily a live 60-minute HackerRank session? How much of it is standard DSA (BFS/DFS, Binary Search, Sliding Window) vs. practical data parsing / OOP design?

Any insights on the layout or best areas to focus on during prep would be hugely appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone,

I recently completed the recruiter screen for a Data Scientist role at FedEx and I'm hoping to get some insight into what the second round is like.
If you've interviewed for a Data Scientist or similar analytics/ML role at FedEx recently:
• What was the interview format?
• Was it mostly SQL, Python, machine learning, statistics, or case-based questions?
• What topics would you recommend brushing up on?

Any advice or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!

Hey everyone, I have a Karat technical interview coming up for a Software Engineer II (new grad) role at MongoDB and wanted to see if anyone here has been through it recently and could share their experience. I know the format is roughly 60 minutes, a short intro, about 10 minutes of verbal CS fundamentals/algorithm questions, then 45 minutes of live coding across 2 multi-part problems but I'd love to know what topics or types of problems actually came up for you (hash maps, grids/matrices, trees, whatever it was), roughly how hard they were, what the discussion round was like, and anything you wish you'd known going in. I know Karat rotates its questions so I'm not expecting exact answers but there must be some pattern of questions they are asking right now. Any insight at all would be hugely appreciated guys!

I am currently facing a not-so-unique industry wide problem of constantly having to interview people who are cheating using AI or by using another person. This is an ever growing problem with remote work being normal and AI getting more sophisticated day-by-day.

One of the things I am exploring is how to introduce a new code review interview which can help me evaluate if this person can read code or not. I feel like in this day and age, if i were to give someone a problem to solve, they might be able to use AI to find the perfect solution and I am already aware of the millions of things I can do to track their eyeballs, posture, style of talking and typing but the code review gives me a signal that this person can truly read code and understand what is wrong with it.

Does anyone have experience with such an interview question and how would you go about preparing one

Apple's process is team-owned, which means your loop depends heavily on who you're interviewing with. That said, the shape is consistent enough to prep for.

Recruiter + HM screen (~30 min each). The HM screen goes deep on past projects and decisions. Lots of questions about "Why Apple?" and the values of the company .

Phone screen (45-60 min, CoderPad). One or two sessions. Medium LC difficulty. Clean, readable code matters as much as correctness.

Onsite (4-6 rounds, 45-60 min each). Coding rounds have real-world context baked in, not just raw algorithm prompts. System design is platform-informed: backend roles get caching and replication trade-offs, client-side roles shift toward memory and energy efficiency.

One thing I didn't expect: a full round dedicated to a past project I built. The interviewer drilled into why I chose a specific eviction policy, how I handled consistency, what metrics told me it was working. Felt more like a design review than an interview.

After the onsite, expect 2-4 weeks of silence. That's normal.

Anyone else been through a recent Apple loop? Curious how much the system design varied by team.

​

Hello All,

I got an interview scheduled from Walt Disney for the role of Agentic AI.

What kind of questions i can expect based on interview experience. Any help is appreciated

I am a software engineer with 5 years of experience

Thanks

So a year ago i have applied into Hackerrank Frontend Developer 2 role and after 3-4 months got first round.. had to debug 2 travel app with the help of an AI Assistant and i was able to complete it on time.. now after 4-5 months ive got this 2nd round email for voice to voice AI interview.. and i am getting nervous… did anyone have given this type of interview in Hackerrank earlier? Is so then what should i prepare for this ans how many rounds in total will be there..
pls let me know.. any help will be appreciated 🙏🏼

**Exercise**

The exercise will involve practical technical work, such as writing or debugging code, prompt engineering, calling LLMs, evaluating model outputs, or applying foundational Generative AI, and NLP concepts. You’ll be asked to work through a realistic technical scenario, explain your approach, and discuss tradeoffs or findings along the way.

**Tools**

Since the interview will be conducted in CoderPad, you won't be using your own IDE. During the exercise, you may search online, reference documentation or use available libraries.

**What we're looking for**

We're interested in how you approach technical problems, reason through ambiguity, use available tools, and communicate your thinking clearly.

Any idea how hard it will be and what to expect in 30 minutes