a recruiter reached out to me, and I approached it with a trial mindset. With 3 years of experience, I expected it to be an L3/L4 interview. Although it wasn’t specified, the given topics made me feel like it was for L4.
after chatting with the recruiter, I mentioned my interest in front-end development, and they were fine with it. They directly waived both my phone screen and OA, moving straight to the onsite (quite exciting). They then asked when I could do the OA. I requested a month to prepare, and they scheduled it for the end of December.
There were a total of five rounds, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with an hour for lunch break.
First round: Behavioral
It was a standard behavioral round, but every topic led to follow-up questions. For example, when I mentioned my thoughts on the current stack of my team, he would ask follow-up questions like, “Oh, I see. Are there any areas you are not satisfied with?”
Second round: Algorithm
The question involved backtracking, somewhat similar to LC’s Word Search II but with different constraints. It’s rare for this company to use exact LC questions. This question was quite challenging, and unfortunately, I had almost no clue about it… I couldn’t solve it. He did provide many hints, but I just couldn’t figure it out.
— However, the following rounds went relatively smoothly, and I could solve almost every one —
Third round: Front End
Received an HR email on 1/14 mentioning that it has been sent to the Hiring Committee! Expecting to hear back in a week.
The process is really dragging on at this company, as they only informed about the Hiring Committee decision in March. Still no team match as of now.