LinkedIn | From constant rejections to an offer | SSE
Summary
After enduring a challenging period of rejections from several top companies, I successfully secured a Software Staff Engineer (SSE) offer from LinkedIn. This experience reinforced the importance of persistence and a relaxed mindset during the interview process, ultimately leading to a rewarding outcome.
Full Experience
After facing constant rejections from March this year from companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Meta, Stripe, and Atlassian, I had zero expectations for the LinkedIn interview. I realized I wasn't handling rejections well and decided to take a month-long vacation to reset. I returned with a fresh perspective, deciding to just put in the effort without worrying about the outcome. Luck certainly played a role in me getting this offer before the year ended. I approached the LinkedIn interviews with a very relaxed mindset.
Here’s how my interview process unfolded:
Round 1 - Technical Phone Screen
This round involved two coding questions. The first was the classic Maximum Subarray Sum (Kadane’s Algorithm), with no modifications. The second was a tree-based data structure question, but unfortunately, I don't recall the exact problem. I received a strong hire verdict for this round.
Onsites - Round 1 DSA
I was given two questions in this round. One was very similar to K Closest Points to Origin on LeetCode. The second was a hard array question that I also can't recall. I managed to solve the first, but for the second, I could only discuss my approach as I ran out of time.
Onsites - Round 2 DSA
This was the most challenging round for me, featuring two hard questions. The interviewer was very kind and extended the time by 15 minutes. The first question was exactly Sliding Window Maximum, which I was somehow able to implement. The second question was quite challenging: finding the top k elements after multiplying values from two arrays (e.g., arr1 = [1, 2, 5, 9], arr2 = [1, 3, 4, 6]). The interviewer explicitly stated that the brute-force approach of multiplying all pairs was not expected. I could only discuss my approach before time ran out.
Onsites - Round 3 Host Leader
This was a typical hiring manager round, focusing on my experience and motivations. It went quite well.
Onsites - Round 4 Technical Communication
In this round, I was asked to explain the most challenging project I had worked on. I articulated the complexities and my solutions effectively, and this round also went very smoothly.
Onsites - Round 5 System Design
The system design problem was to design a Top K system to gather exceptions from different services and display the top K exceptions within a 24-hour window. I discussed various architectural approaches and data pipelines, and I felt this round went pretty well too.
I was ultimately selected and will update compensation details soon. I hope my experience helps others facing rejections; persistence is truly underrated, and sometimes, a bit of luck plays its part.
Interview Questions (6)
Given an integer array nums, find the contiguous subarray (containing at least one number) which has the largest sum and return its sum. The problem was exactly the same as the standard Kadane's Algorithm problem with no modifications.
Given two arrays, arr1 and arr2, find the top k elements from the list of all possible products where each product is formed by multiplying one element from arr1 and one element from arr2. The brute force approach of multiplying all pairs and then finding top K is not expected. For example, if arr1 = [1, 2, 5, 9] and arr2 = [1, 3, 4, 6], find the top k products.
Describe and explain the most challenging project you have worked on, including the problems faced and how you overcame them.
Design a system to gather exceptions from various services and display the top K most frequent exceptions within a 24-hour time window. I discussed different architectural approaches and data pipelines.
Preparation Tips
My preparation involved solving approximately 900 LeetCode questions over time. Despite facing many rejections previously, for this particular interview, I approached it with a relaxed mindset, focusing on putting in effort without undue stress about the outcome, which I believe contributed to my success.