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Interview experiences
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Interview experiences · Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer Interview Experience — An Algorithm Question That Turned Into System Design
Interview Process Introduced ourselves to each other Asked about resume details (the interviewer was pretty funny — he saw on my resume that I mentioned how much revenue my project had contributed, and he actually asked whether the company had actually paid me that money) Algorithm question / system design Questions for the interviewer Algorithm Question / System Design This part was interesting.…
Interview experiences · Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Architecture Walkthrough Then Build on Top of It
Interview process Introduced ourselves to each other Asked about resume details A simple algorithm warm-up question System design based on the team's existing architecture Q&A for the interviewer Algorithm question: 226. Invert Binary Tree Wrote it on the whiteboard and did a dry run. System design This team is similar to an ML Infra team — the ML team provides a bunch of models, wraps them into…
Interview experiences · Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Five Onsite Rounds, Rejected via Candidate Portal
I interviewed with them at the end of last month. First I talked with the HM, and a week later I went onsite at the company. There were five rounds total, 45 minutes each. Every round started with questions about past projects, then a lot of content around k8s, networking, and cloud. Coding included typical LeetCode-style problems, plus one simple BFS. Design included a scheduler and metrics moni…
Interview experiences · Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer interview experience: missed interview follow-up
The technical content was not what defined this process for me. Recruiter contact started well, then communication stopped. My emails and phone outreach went unanswered, and even an interview that had been scheduled did not happen as expected. There was a no-show situation where I was left waiting without follow-up. That missed interview felt secondary to the larger problem: I never received any…
Interview experiences · Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer Interview Experience — Sloppy Scheduling, No Lunch, and a Surprisingly Easy Onsite
First, let me vent about the interview experience here — it was very unprofessional. From start to finish I never received a single HR email; it was always unscheduled phone calls, and I never got any prep doc either. Contact was basically one-way. After the HR call in January, almost a month went by with no movement, and I figured it was dead. Then suddenly they reached out to schedule the hirin…
Interview experiences · Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer interview: project decisions and AI
After applying, I had a recruiter phone screen about my experience and the technologies I had used. Soon afterward, the technical discussion focused on how I had built real projects: one project in depth, the design decisions I made, and the trade-offs behind them. That conversation also included how I had considered adopting AI in my current work. Coding-related exchanges were woven into the pro…
Interview experiences · Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks Software Engineer interview: three-hour mixed evaluation
I began with an online HackerRank completed on my own. Next came behavioral questions on HireVue, without video recording. A recruiter call followed with the usual request to walk through myself and similar basics, meant to confirm fit and direction before the deeper stages. The next step was the largest one. The recruiter said it would take around three hours, and that was how it played out: rou…
Interview experiences · Pandora Jewelry
Pandora Jewelry Account Executive Interview Experience: relaxed in-store customer-service interview
The process was quick and easy. I was invited to a relaxed in-person interview, sometimes in a small office area behind the store. The staff were professional without being intimidating. They asked about my background, customer service, availability, and why I wanted the role. The discussion did not go deep into role-specific complexity. It was about staying positive and friendly, explaining myse…
Interview experiences · Pandora Jewelry
Pandora Jewelry Account Executive Interview Experience: sell charms and bracelets
I went through a fairly structured, retail-style process for the Account Executive role. I applied online, completed a quiz, and was called to the shop for an in-person interview lasting about 20 to 30 minutes. The manager was direct and friendly, asking about my previous experience and a few personal details. The questions weren't all abstract. I was given charms and bracelets on a tray and aske…
Interview experiences · Patreon
Patreon Data Engineer Interview Experience — Easy Phone Screen, HM Chat, Then I Dropped Before the Onsite
Posting my full Patreon loop from February, which I never wrote up. A former coworker referred me into the data team. There don't seem to be many Patreon interview write-ups, so I'm contributing one too. Feb 27: 1st round They gave me a big pile of JSON data that looked like users' personal data, with names, addresses, payment methods and so on, and asked me to do some basic data processing. At f…
Interview experiences · Patreon
Patreon Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Wordle-Style Coding Screen Nobody Warns You About
Not a question from the forum, which surprised me — I'd seen people on the forum say the phone screen here is basically coding rounds, IC/manager rounds, rate limiter, shopping cart, that sort of thing. The problem was roughly a guessing-word game: given a guess word and a target word, mark the status of each position. green: the two chars at this index are the same yellow: the two chars at this…
Interview experiences · Patreon
Patreon Software Engineer Interview Experience — Technical Phone Screen on an In-Memory Rate Limiter
The question was the rate limit one. You need to use an in-memory rate limiter to protect an API endpoint. The rate limiter is initialized with a value that represents the maximum number of requests allowed per second. Every time a request hits the API endpoint, it first asks the rate limiter whether there is still capacity to handle the request, and the rate limiter decides based on that whether…
Interview experiences · Paychex
Paychex Software Engineer interview: take-home and load testing
After speaking with the recruiter, the process moved quickly into structured technical work. I had a technical screen with clear questions about my experience, then a longer coding take-home. Afterward, we reviewed my solution and covered more basic technical questions about fundamentals and how I approached the problem. Next came a longer manager discussion with behavioral questions and addition…
Interview experiences · PayPal
PayPal Data Scientist Interview Experience — Passed Two Fraud Rounds Despite a Rocky Performance
I applied to a few PayPal positions before Christmas, and two of my applications got recruiter calls. One of them was for a Fraud DS role and moved to interviews fast. The interviewer was someone from the same team based in India, and the interview was at 10:30pm Eastern. They asked about fraud, statistics, SQL, and Python. The second round was with the hiring manager, also based in India, at aro…
Interview experiences · PayPal
PayPal Data Scientist Interview Experience — Three Back-to-Back Onsite Rounds and a SQL Standoff
Past experience, resume, explaining the role. Then they asked two case questions. Case 1: 3-level apartment plus 1 basement — find the best way to operate the elevator. Case 2: card risk — what will fraudsters do. Onsite: 3 rounds back-to-back. Risk/fraud scenario. Started off talking about my past experience, then the interviewer explained that this DS role isn't mainly about modeling. He gave m…
Interview experiences · PayPal
PayPal Data Scientist Interview Experience — Two Brutal Phone Rounds on SQL, Python, and Airport Causal Inference
Overall impression: it was really hard. First there was a 15-minute recruiter call. They asked briefly about my current job, why I was looking, and my visa/status situation, then said they'd send an email with the interview process. The phone interviews were two rounds total, each 1 hour. Round 1: coding (including SQL and Python), plus a case study. The SQL question was built around drivers and…
Interview experiences · PayPay India
PayPay India Backend Engineer Interview Experience: Perfect test score, rejection
I applied online and quickly received an automated CodeSignal link. I completed four questions and scored 600 out of 600. There was no recruiter conversation, only the test and then a wait. About a week later, I received a rejection email. It made me suspect scoring was being used as an automatic filter without real human review, and left a bitter impression that felt like ghost hiring. Location:…
Interview experiences · PayPay India
PayPay India Backend Engineer Japanese-language assessment experience
After applying, I took an online coding assessment and then reached a first-round interview. The assessment had four algorithm problems. One was a simulation task that required careful edge-case handling rather than only straightforward logic. I passed the assessment and had a technical interview, but did not move past the next step. The emails and interview communication were all in Japanese, so…
Interview experiences · PayPay India
PayPay India Software Engineer interview: coding assessment and unclear follow-through
After a recruiter touchpoint, the process followed a structured sequence: an online coding assessment and then technical interviews. The assessment used a proctored platform and LeetCode-style problem solving, so it felt like a real filter. I scored well, then moved into backend-focused discussions and deeper computer science topics. The technical rounds covered data structures and algorithms, ba…
Interview experiences · Paytm
Paytm Software Engineer interview: DSA, wallet design, and Java
After speaking with a recruiter, I had a medium-difficulty DSA technical screen about a week later. It was a straightforward checkpoint where I needed to communicate my reasoning before, during, and after coding. The next round was harder. I received a medium-to-hard tree problem and a system-design prompt about Paytm Wallet, so I had to move from an algorithm into design trade-offs. The last tec…
Interview experiences · PDT Partners
PDT Partners Machine Learning Engineer Interview Experience — Project Deep Dive, Then a Find-Divisors Follow-up
I interviewed with Citadel Securities (see my previous post) and PDT back to back. I originally wanted to post both back to back too, but something came up and I got delayed. The PDT team is different from the Citadel one. The link they sent was for a research engineer role, but both the headhunter and HR said it would be an LLM team, and it was hybrid 3 days a week, so I was really excited. But…
Interview experiences · PepsiCo
PepsiCo Account Executive behavioral interview with STAR examples
The process had little friction. It began with a quick informational session that set expectations, then moved into the interview without surprises. The focus was basic fit: how I worked with people, handled conflict, and contributed to a team. The conversation was casual rather than interrogative. I discussed my background and used STAR examples for scenario questions, including a question about…
Interview experiences · Perceptyx
Perceptyx Software Engineer Interview Experience — Project Deep Dive and a Next-Day Rejection
This round was mainly a project demo / project deep dive. The project could be something from work or something I had built myself. The main task was to explain what I had done, how I had designed and implemented it, what problems I had encountered, and the feature or product's impact and scale. The interview felt more like a conversation than a fixed set of questions. The interviewer kept follow…
Interview experiences · Peregrine
Peregrine Software Engineer Interview Experience — A Grueling Practical-Coding Onsite, Rejected Over 'Coding Notes'
I've failed a bunch of these interviews recently — huge amounts of code, all in the details, barely any algorithms. Not sure if I'm just writing too slowly or what, but it feels like they're hiring an AI. The take-home was the same as one already discussed on the forum — pretty simple, just understand the context, aggregate some data, then filter. The hiring manager round had a bit of a weak red…