I started interviewing in November, finished in March. All those delays were no fault of my own, this company is just very slow and didn't show up to our scheduled meetings.
First call is recruiter, nothing much here besides checking if you have a pulse.
Second call is 1 hour with the hiring manager. HM missed our initial call so we had to reschedule. (red flag #1)
On the rescheduled interview a few days later, he was about 15 minutes late. (red flag #2)
I had to ping the recruiter/coordinator to make sure this guy is still showing up.
Not much happened in that call beyond "tell me about a time.." It was half technical and HM poked a lot on my experience, but as long as you're not lying in your resume it shouldn't be anything hard or alarming.
Then they scheduled me for a 3 hour (THREE HOURS) call with two engineers, presumably the technical round. They did not consult me about my availability and just booked me. I also did not get any info from the recruiter as to what the call will be. Recruiter said "could be DSA, your work exp, technical stuff, systems design, Java, Scala, Python".
And just like the HM interview, the interviewers were a no-show so we had to reschedule AGAIN. (red flag #3)
The 3 hour interview was basically 2 1.5 hour calls. Both rounds were Algorithmic rounds. They asked 4 medium-hard leetcode questions that are under Meta's top list. I was able to solve them on time, but the interviewers seemed to have a hard time following my explanation and test cases. I don't think the interviewer knows the problem well and haven't interviewed out of the company in a while. He took 10 minutes each question just trying to explain them and for some reason kept saying "This is easy, this is simple,...". They were NOT. I was able to answer the questions well and verified in the coderpad. We spent a good 15 minutes after each solution with me just repeating test cases.
A day later, they scheduled me again for another 3 hour block. Just like last time, I did not get any heads up on what to expect, nor ask for my availability.
The next 3 hour interview was also 2 Leetcode style questions and Systems Design question. The leetcode questions were more on the easy-medium side with many edge cases. Nothing too out of the expected here.
When I applied, the base salary range was higher. I checked the job posting again after 2 months, and the range posted is much lower than before. (red flag #4)
A few days later they extended an offer on the lowest end of the second range they posted. The first range was already on the low end of tech salaries for a senior engineer. The second range is closer to mid range engineer. I feel a little insulted getting the lowest possible base salary offer from them after being grilled FAANG questions and them not showing up to our calls.
Algo questions:
Group Anagrams
Polish Notation
Binary Tree Zigzag Level Order Traversal
Design In-Memory File System
A bunch of obscure Java questions
Systems Design:
Design Netflix, talk about user side and video uploads. We covered a lot of ground, you have to know your fundamentals and communicate it well.
