Postman Interviews

I interviewed for a SDE2 backend role at Postman

Round 1 (Machine Coding)

Design/implement a URL shortener. Solved it as I had previously practiced it. The interviewer was nice. Discussed about HTTP codes, collision etc. Went well.

Round 2 (System Design)

This was supposed to be a system design round. But the interviewer was a fool. He joined 5 mins late, didn't turn on the camera, left few mins early. Looked like he wasn't even interested to interview.

Now coming to the question, he asked me to design a comment system with support for annotation. We can have one level of replies for each comment. It's possible to tag users in the comment. Even though, it was a HLD round, he was focusing on very low level implementation detatils, APIs, algorithm for annotation etc.

I mean if you wanna test problem solving skills or LLD, then have a round specifically for it. System design interviews focus more on the system as a whole, focussing on design choices, scalability, availibilty, performance etc.

The interviewer was not collaboratve, hardly spoke anything. It was me trying all the time to make the discussion interactive. One of the worst interviwer I ever spoke to.

There was no Round 3 as expected, since I was rejected in the so called system design round. Round 3 would have the final HM round.

The entire process went for over a month. I was contacted by someone from staffing agency who forwarded my profile to Postman. Got a call back from Postman recruiter after almost 3 weeks.

Round 1: HM Discussion Had a 1 hour discussion with the HM. It included questions about my experience, the projects that I had worked on, some scenario based questions and some high level design questions based on caching.

Got confirmation after 3 days that the feedback is positive and they scheduled the next two rounds - machine coding and system design. I asked to schedule design first.

Round 2: System Design I was asked to design a system similar to Google Calendar with focus on async flows. Panelist also focused on API design etc. It went well.

Round 3: Machine Coding This was scheduled after another 1.5 week or so. I was expected to have a local setup along with database and the expectation defined by the recruiter was that I will be expected to write working API code with DB integrations. However, the panelist was very cool and we had a good discussion around building Facebook like comment system with in-memory store. Initially he wanted me to start on Google Doc itself, after almost 40 mins he gave me a choice to switch to IDE if I wanted, which wouldn't have been wise for me since more than half the code was in Google Doc, so I continued there. He extended the discussion by around 25 mins but had a good discussion.

Got a call from recruiter after a week that the feedback is positive in all the rounds just not very strong in design. She mentioned it is strong but not very strong and since I had experience in building platforms too, they wanted to schedule another HM screening to identify the right team. This got scheduled in the next week, which became the game changer.

Round 4: Yet another HM (or may be bar raiser) It was with one of their Senior EM who was hired in Postman a month ago.I checked his LinkedIn profile before the interview and he held total 5 years of experience. The HM from my first round reported to him who held over 11 years of experience (imagine!). This guy made his assumption that I do not have product building experience because according to him, he is the only one building product in the world as it is being used by Millions of users across the globe. Haha. After almost 50 mins of this kind of conversation, he asked me to build dating app and asked me if I had used one. I was pissed with his attitude and asked him to share his experience using it. Anyways, I started with designing the system, defining core components like location services etc but he apparently read the first article in google search and wanted me to just put ES in the design and was not even following what I was saying. Dragged this discussion for almost 2 hours. I called up the recruiter after 3 days when I did not hear back and told her my experience. Received a call back from the recruiter after 2 weeks that this HM mentioned I do not have product exp. When I highlighted his limited exp in the industry, they mentioned he was hired directly by the founders from US and since he is the SEM, they can't do anything, lol.

Would have anyways got difficult for me to work with manager like him. I have worked in different companies, different departments and at least with 8 managers, have lead teams of over 15 people - of course I understand these red flags.

Overall experience was good except for the last round, the recruiter was also responsive and honest. So overall I was satisfied but I rather take this rejection as mutual, bcz I also get to choose my manager haha.

Hope this helps someone and all the best if you end of getting under this manager.

Round 1 (Recruiter connect)

This initial phone screening with the recruiter focused on my experience and expertise across various technologies. Following this discussion, my profile was shortlisted for the Hiring Manager round.

Round 2 (HM Connect)

In this round, I spoke with a manager who questioned me about fundamental web technologies, including how a browser operates and some basic CSS concepts. We also delved into backend system design and scalability. The objective was to assess my foundational understanding of both frontend and backend technologies.

Round 3 (Technical Knowledge)

This round involved a discussion with an SDE-2. The primary focus was on my past projects, leading to many questions related to event-driven architecture, given its prominence in my work. We also covered REST APIs, designing a scheduling service, and discussed indexing and sharding in depth. Overall, I felt this round went very well, which allowed me to progress to the next stage.

Round 4 (Machine Coding)

My final round was another session with an SDE-2. Here, I was given a machine coding task: implementing a URL shortener. We began by discussing the problem statement, after which I outlined my proposed approach and started coding in Node.js. I faced a minor challenge during implementation, but with a helpful hint, I managed to fully solve the problem and produce working code. We then proceeded to test the API using Postman and discussed potential improvements and scalability considerations for the solution. I consider this round to have been successful.

Two days later, I received an email from HR informing me that my application would not be moving forward. The reason stated was that the role required more frontend focus, whereas my primary experience lay in backend development. While disappointed, I view this experience as a valuable learning opportunity.

I recently interviewed for an SDE3 position at Postman in Bangalore. I have 5 years of experience and am currently working as a Senior SDE. The interview process spanned three rounds, after which I was unfortunately ghosted by the HR.

My first round was a 1-hour Low-Level System Design Round. The interviewer challenged me to design and code a Facebook comments and reply system. We focused on using a Node.js Express server and MongoDB, with the constraint that replies would only be at level 1 of nesting, though multiple levels would earn brownie points. I believe I performed well and advanced to the next stage.

The second round was a 1-hour Discussion round with one of the Co-founder. This round primarily involved discussing my current work and answering a few technical questions. I successfully cleared this round as well.

The third round was another 1-hour session, this time focusing on High-Level System Design Round. I was tasked with designing a task scheduler service. I managed to work out a satisfactory design and passed this round.

Following these three successful rounds, only the hiring manager round remained. The recruiter initially informed me that this round would be scheduled soon, but then completely ghosted me. Despite my attempts to contact them via calls and texts, I received no response. I've lost all hope of hearing back, and I find it disappointing when candidates are left hanging without any status updates. I wish companies would maintain basic human decency and communicate outcomes.