LinkedIn | Software Engineer - Applications

Hello! It's time for me to finally give back to the community.

Some stats:
2 yoe
~300 leetcode questions
Applied through referral

Phone Screen:

https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-subarray/
https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-product-subarray/description/

Onsite:

Coding 1:

https://leetcode.com/problems/max-consecutive-ones-iii/description/
With multiple follow-ups.

Needed a few hints with the follow-ups. At the very end we ran out of time so I had to answer them verbally.

Technical Communication:

I felt like my past projects were very lackluster. My last role was very domain specific, and the project itself was adding a new configuration to a pipeline that was already established by rock-star engineers before me. Because of this, the design choices I made were very straightforward with little to no tradeoffs to consider. I talked about the infrastructure of the pipeline, and the data flow that is involved with the new configuration.

When asked what I would change I talked about possible modifications to the infrastructure and the effect it would have. But with the tradeoffs considered I would stick to the original design of the engineers before me.

Coding 2:

https://leetcode.com/problems/lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree/description/

In asking clarifying questions I inadvertently increased the scope of the question and had to implement something extra. I needed a few hints but was able to complete the question. We ended with 15 minutes to spare and I was a bit confused as I was expecting 2 questions. Finished the rest of the interview chatting about linkedin and their experiences.

HM:

Was asked behavioral questions and data processing questions. They asked some high level System Design question related to metrics gathering. At the very end of the interview they kept talking to the point where the next round of interviewers came in and had to cut things short. This was my favorite interaction in the entire interview, as I really enjoy people sharing the things they’re passionate about.

System Design:

Design a calendar. I was most nervous about this, as it was my first time in an official System Design interview. I think I spent a little too much time on the high-level API’s and gathering requirements, where at the end of the interview we didn't get a chance to discuss too much into scalability (which I think is the fun part). But overall I was able to get a decent high level design that solved the problem, and was able to answer all of their questions.

Final Result: Offer

I got really lucky that I was relatively familiar with the questions I received. All interviewers were very kind and I felt like I vibed with all of them. If I had to prep again I would focus on the top LinkedIn tagged questions, and the rest on System Design. I did mock interviews for all of the interviews above categories and it really gave me confidence on the big day.

For those that were impacted by layoffs don't give up! End of last year I was laid-off and was driving home from work crying. I felt like a failure and my confidence and self-worth was at an all-time low. But reading everyone’s posts on their interview grind gave me the motivation to keep on going. If anyone reading this is going through anything similar I want you to know that with enough time and luck things will eventually get better.