I went through three rounds of interviews, two phone and one on site. The support team behind the interviewing process was delightfully helpful, setting me up with everything I'd need to be prepared for the onsite interview set (weirdly) in San Francisco. I only parenthetically say "weirdly" because to me part of getting an understanding of a candidate is doing so in context, and Portland is not very similar to SF in some pretty important ways.
My onsite interview consisted of a tour of the beautiful facility and 3 tech interviews along with 3 non tech interviews. Each segment was about 45 minutes in length.
The non tech interviews were refreshing, as I like to talk to people in different focuses to get a better gauge of the company. All of the interviewers were very likable, but a few seemed somewhat uninterested in being there. As someone who's spent a lot of time in the hiring seat, this was a bit of a turnoff. I know interviews take a lot of time and energy, but that's not the candidate's fault.
Even though none of the three interviewers were front end engineers (all infrastructure), two of the interviews focused on matters I would say are well centered around front end development. I sailed through those interviews with ease. They were pretty simple.
The other was more of a comp sci focus, around a somewhat simple (in hindsight) problem. I have a problem with these questions though, as they don't gauge anything except whether a person has run into this specific algorithmic problem before and how well they remember the solution. If the company wants a computer that can spit out the ideal algo solution to a problem with seconds , there's already a pretty good one called Google. Aside from that, determining a proper algorithmic solution to a problem is a research and test cycle that should and does often take a generous amount of time to figure out, well past anything one could accomplish in 45 minutes.
One other gripe I had is that the recruiters said I should be as comfortable as possible so I should bring my laptop and set it up with my ideal stack and ide config, but when I actually got in, all of the interviewers made me use codepen, which is glitchy at best and very clumsy to use.
So even after sailing through the front end questions and being well liked from a personality basis, I was still rejected because of my failing the algorithm question. It stings of course, and I feel Airbnb made an unfortunate mistake, but honestly, if they really want a frontender who can prattle off algos with the drop of the hat, I guess that's what I'll learn next.