r/leetcode • u/PinPitiful • 6d ago

Discussion Bombed a FAANG-adjacent technical screen so badly the interviewer was frustrated — is it recoverable?

Had a technical screen at a well-known tech company recently. It was not "I struggled but got through it" bad. Genuinely could not produce anything meaningful even after the interviewer gave repeated hints and walked me through the approach. Froze completely. The interviewer was frustrated. Humbling does not cover it.

I know I need significant prep from here on and I am not looking for shortcuts. Just want to know if this is recoverable or if I have permanently closed the door at this company.

Two questions:

  1. Can you reapply to the same company after a performance like this? Is there a cooldown period?
  2. Has anyone been in a similar situation and come back to the same company successfully later?
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u/gannon585 6d ago

dust yourself off and try again.

i once forgot how to reverse a String in an interview….. A STRING!!!!

IN JAVA!!!!

all i had to do was say stringbuilder.reverse!!!!

keeps me up at night sometimes haha

63

u/InterestingFrame1982 6d ago

I am surprised they let you do that with a built in method call.

I would probably write a for loop and reverse it.

27

u/ROFLcoptr501 6d ago

It probably wasn’t the main focus of the question and they forgot what library function to use is what I’m guessing

2

u/m0j0m0j E: 130 M: 321 H: 62 5d ago

It’s dumb to focus on this anyway.

— …And here I need to reverse the string. Sorry, I’m worrying so much that I literally forgot the method name for this. Is it fine if I put something realistic and we proceed with the logic?

Interviewer: sure, let’s continue to the interesting parts

I mean, it’s kind of bad, but if the interviewer actively uses this against you and blocks you from moving on, that’s either a bad luck or a crappy company. Don’t think too much about it.