Mastercard Software Engineer interview: a rushed EV design and BFS coding round

My Karat round was fast, high pressure, and oddly disorganized. The interviewer had a list of questions to get through, so there was little room for a natural conversation. I got a system-design question about an EV charging scenario, and they covered multiple items in a way that made it hard to go deep on the design choices.

Then I had a LeetCode-style coding problem with under 20 minutes. It was called "very easy," but it still took real problem-solving, especially combining hash maps with BFS. The pace made it hard to finish confidently. The system-design part also never felt substantive. I got the impression that there was little interest in engineering trade-offs and more interest in checking boxes.

It was average to difficult, and I felt judged more on speed than clarity. I did not receive an offer. I left with the impression that the round format, rather than my ability to reason, was the biggest obstacle.

Location: Pune. Overall feedback: negative. Offer status: no offer.