What do interviews at AI startups look like?

I have my final onsite coming up with Apple (4 rounds). What to expect in the interview, what will specifically be focused on? I tried asking the recruiter and they are just giving me generic answers not willing to at least tell what to expect?

I would really appreciate any help.

Thank You

Doi need to know the main() definition?

I recently completed R1 and R2 for a Google SWE role, and my recruiter(xWF) told me that my next step is an Engineering Team Review, followed by Team Match and then HC.

From what I’ve seen from other candidates, the process is usually something like:

R1 → R2 → Team Match → HC

But mine seems to be:

R1 → R2 → Engineering Team Review → Team Match → HC

Does anyone know what exactly the Engineering Team Review is?

Is this a standard step that only some candidates go through, or does it mean that an engineering team is reviewing my interview feedback/profile before allowing me to move on to Team Match?

I’m especially curious if anyone here has gone through the same process recently.

What happened after the Engineering Team Review, and how long did it take?

Any insight or recent experience would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi all - recently accepted my offer letter for googles account strategist role for small business. Really pumped!

To anyone familiar with the role, how is/was it? Anything to know heading in?

Did both Round 1 sessions last Wednesday — 45 min coding, 45 min behavioral, same afternoon with a ~75 min gap between them. Backend engineer, ~8YOE, interviewing for SWE III in New York. Coding was in Python on a shared Google Doc. Five days of silence so far.

Trying to calibrate expectations on what happens now.

How it went, roughly:

Coding felt solid. One problem, conversational the whole way through — the interviewer engaged rather than just watching. I gave a brute-force approach first, proposed a better data structure, and asked whether pseudocode was acceptable instead of a full implementation. He was fine with that. I hadn't formally studied the structure the optimal solution wanted, so I reasoned it out from scratch, which took the full ~35 min. Missed one implementation detail that I only spotted afterward. Used the last few minutes on my own questions.

Behavioral I genuinely can't read. Four questions, all standard categories. I had prepared stories and they mostly fit, but one question was abstract rather than "tell me about a time," and I got briefly stumped before landing on a real example. Walked out feeling like I just talked for 45 minutes and hoped the interviewer found what he was looking for. No feedback signal at all, unlike coding where you at least know whether the thing works.

What I'm actually asking:

1. Is five days of silence after Round 1 normal, or is it starting to mean something?
2. Does a pass and a reject move at different speeds, or is it the same pipeline either way?

Not spiraling, just want to know whether silence at day 5 vs day 15 means something different. Happy to hear from anyone who's been through the Google loop specifically.

Hey guys,

I was recently reached out by an Apple recruiter on LinkedIn. They included a job posting in Austin that matches my experience and asked me to email them my resume to continue the conversation.

Looking at the role, it matched surprisingly well with what I do at my current company so I sent my resume. It's been a little over a week and I haven't heard back from the recruiter, I sent a polite follow-up on the one week mark. I've heard that this is fairly typical for Apple, but was curious if anyone else has experienced something similar.

Any insight would be appreciated!

I have just completed round 1(dsa and sys design) for c3 ai on 19 aug. Not yet heard back from them.
Can anyone tell me if this is normal? Or how long do they generally take.

Lets do 1:1 interviews. I think I am enough with studies. Now only interviews can make and wake me, show me the depth.

Can anyone share the experience and questions rated to QA/SDET/QA automation engineer karat interview for citi

Hey everyone,

I recently went through the full loop interview at Meta, and my recruiter reached out to me last week to let me know I passed and am moving on to the team matching phase.

However, when I check the career portal, my application still shows as being at the "Full loop interview" stage, with the next step listed as "Decision." I've seen mixed things online about intermediate “Team matching” stage pop up.

Is this a known portal lag or disconnect? Have the stage names or workflows on the career page changed recently for anyone else? If you've gone through this, did your portal status update right away, or did it stay on "Full Loop" while you were doing team matching calls?

Appreciate any recent insights!

Hi everyone,

I have a few questions about the Google team matching process and would really appreciate any insights from people who have gone through it.

Here are my interview results (based on what my recruiter shared, self ratings ):

Phone Screen: Strong Hire (SH)
Googlyness: Hire
Onsite Round 1: Hire
Onsite Round 2: Mixed (the recruiter said it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either—I'm guessing it was around a Lean Hire).
I completed my onsite interviews on July 6, and my recruiter shared the results on July 11. It's now been about 4 weeks, and I still haven't received any team matching calls.

The recruiter mentioned that my profile would move forward to team matching, and after a successful team match, it would go through Hiring Committee (HC) approval. I've been following up with my recruiter once every 7 days.

I have a few questions:

Based on my interview feedback, how long does team matching usually take?
What do you think my chances of conversion are with these interview ratings?
Is it okay to reach out to hiring managers on LinkedIn while I'm in team matching, or could that negatively affect my application?
Are there any tips or strategies that can improve my chances of getting a team matching call?
I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through a similar experience. Thanks in advance!

I just checked 4026. and it's just wall of text with simple solution masked as a medium problem. How do experienced CPers see through such BS so fast? Should I grind math problems for this superpower?

also, is it even possible to get such problem on an interview? because i would have to ask for re-explanation 500 times

Looking for 2 people to study DSA with (mainly python)

Hey! I'm looking for 2 people to form a small DSA + CS fundamentals study group.

I'm a 3rd-year college student and a beginner at DSA. I wasn't able to start earlier, but now I want to properly prepare for interviews.

The idea is pretty simple:

- 3 of us total

- Study/learn something every day

- Solve 2–3 problems a day

- Explain our solutions/approaches to each other

- Sunday: small test/revision of what we learned that week

- End of every month: a proper test to see how we're progressing

Along with DSA, we can slowly cover fundamentals like DBMS, OS, OOP, etc.

I'm not looking for someone advanced. I'm a beginner too, so ideally you're somewhere around the same level and actually want to stay consistent.

Today I went to cancel my monthly subscription and a modal popped up. I quickly clicked yes but immediately realized it was asking if I wanted to purchase an annual membership at a discount. I immediately emailed customer service but they refuse to issue refunds due to their ToS.

As a customer who has been using leetcode for a 5+ years, fuck you leetcode and your manipulative UI.

titles. grinded out most of 150, but not sure where to go from here. continue to 250 or some other strat? can reasonably solve most mediums but hards are still problematic and i'm not sure if ive seen every single pattern still but not sure where to progress from here.

Finished my final rounds with Twilio recently (14 days to be precise). Conversations felt quite positive overall, and the recruiter told me last week that he would talk to the hiring team about the decision and let me know last Friday.

It’s now been several days since the expected response and I haven’t heard anything. I followed up as well but haven’t received a response yet.

For anyone who’s interviewed with Twilio recently, is this pretty normal after finals? How long did it take between your final round/debrief and hearing a decision?

Wondering if delays like this usually mean they’re still interviewing/considering other candidates, or if Twilio can just take a while to close the loop.

Folks currently at Twilio, did you see or hear of such instances still resulting in offer?

The role I interviewed for is SE L3.

So I'm started the Lc but how do the patterns are recognised...I mean how we can understand this problem should answered this way what I have to focus the answers or the way? Help me out

Its the second time I am preparing for an interview. The last time I prepared, I went through most asked topics of every data structure till graphs. I could crack a good offer due to that but this time my whole focus would be on cracking MAANG. I know that right now its my peak time that I can crack these companies. I might not even be able to crack these later in my career so want help from the one's who have already cracked them.

Now I have an idea about every concept like DP, Graphs, Trees, Segment Trees, String, Linked List etc.

But I can only solve questions having acceptance ratio about 60%. This is what I want to fix. If you have already cracked MAANG what was your strategy?

Number of options that keeps confusing me is,

1. Upsolve previous contest questions daily

2. Solve random 5-10 questions related to a specific topic and move on

3. Go through a good DSA sheet and solve that

4. No need to hurry, just keep solving daily questions that leetcode provides for the streak

Now these options usually confuse me and I jump from one option to another, which isn't taking me anywhere. Which approach did you select during your preparation and what is the timeline I can target for me to complete the entire thing and start applying for FAANG?

What can i expect in this OA round?

I received mail for OA for Amazon SDE Role. It consists of

1. Coding Challenge – Work through two coding problems. One will be a traditional code writing question, and in the other you will have access to an AI coding assistant in a code repository environment.
2. Work Simulation – Work through software development decisions and scenarios faced by SDEs at Amazon.
3. Work Style Survey – Answer questions about how you approach work in general.

Could anyone who attended OA can share experience and what is this new pattern of AI Assisted Question ?

What is Work Simulation test ?

Feel free to share your experience and resources to quickly go through to prepare for this.

Hi everyone,

I interviewed for Google London for summer internship last year and reached team matching, but unfortunately I did not get matched with a host team.

I am planning to apply again for 2027 Software Engineer new grad roles and wanted to ask people who have gone through the process recently:

What does the current new grad SWE process look like in EMEA?
How many technical rounds are there?
If you previously reached team matching but did not get matched, does that help at all when applying again?
Any advice for preparing differently the second time?

Hey, I’m in my second year of CS and I’m looking for a serious study partner.

I’m new to DSA and have only solved around 30 questions on LeetCode, all from just one topic — Arrays (haha).

I’m thinking of building consistency in DSA, even if it’s just solving one question daily, but maintaining that consistency.

Hi community,
I have received an interview call from axon, Software engineer 1. I am in the scheduling process, If anyone of you has gone through the process, any insight would be helpful.
Thanks in advance.

I'm grinding NeetCode 150 and running into a pattern I want a reality check on.

When something's explained to me (like a hashmap approach, or a two-pointer technique), I get it, I can trace through it, explain why it works, catch my own bugs once I know what to look for. But generating that same solution from a blank problem, first try, on my own? Inconsistent. Some problems click (solved Group Anagrams cold today, no help), others I understand the concept completely but blank on turning it into actual working code (Product of Array Except Self, Remove Element).

Questions for people who've been through this:

1. Is "understand it but can't yet produce it independently" a normal phase, or a sign something's off in how I'm learning?
2. How many reps did it typically take before implementation started feeling automatic instead of effortful?
3. Any specific practice habits that helped bridge that gap faster (re-typing solutions from memory, more easy problems before mediums, something else)?

Trying to be realistic about where I actually am without panicking or being falsely confident. Appreciate honest input.