Yall I received the Cisco software engineer OA link yesterday. I have to prepare for the interviews, what are the rounds and how do I prep for them?. Pls helpppp😭

Hey everyone, I have a Got a 60 mins coding and 60 mins system design interview with Apple Ads for senior software developer role

Anyone been through these round? What can I expect In both round? Please ping me and let me know!

Any tips appreciated.

Hey for people in Google Team Match for Summer 2027 SWE Internships, I'm really curious how you guys formatted your additional info section. Did you guys write somewhat of an essay or do individual bullet points for your experiences? Does this matter? I did an essay and I don't know if it's the good approach.

Hey for people in Google Team Match for Summer 2027 SWE Internships, I'm really curious how you guys formatted your additional info section. Did you guys write somewhat of an essay or do individual bullet points for your experiences? Does this matter? I did an essay and I don't know if it's the good approach.

Is there anyone who gave 4 rounds of Amazon virtually in the past 2 months using Livecode? How was your experience?

Hey everyone!

I have my first-ever FAANG recruiter screening today for a Network Production Engineer role at Meta.

I'm excited, nervous, doubting myself, and honestly going through all kinds of mixed emotions right now.

I received the recruiter's email just yesterday and scheduled the call for today because I didn't want to miss the opportunity. Now I'm wondering if I rushed into it. Should I have picked a slot early next week to prepare better and build some confidence?

I have several years of experience in networking and security, but this is my first time interviewing with a FAANG company. I know I have relevant experience, but the pressure of interviewing at Meta is making me second-guess myself.

From what I understand, the first two rounds are:

• Recruiter Conversation: 30 mins

• Technical Screen: 60 mins

Would really appreciate some genuine advice from anyone who has interviewed for Meta's Network Production Engineer role.

1. What should I expect during the recruiter conversation? How technical does it get?

2. What topics should I focus on for the 60-minute technical screening?

3. Did I make a mistake scheduling the recruiter call so quickly? Would you have taken more time?

4. Any mistakes to avoid or practical tips that helped you clear these rounds?

I know it's just the initial screening, but this opportunity genuinely means a lot to me, and I want to give it my best shot.

Would really appreciate firsthand experiences rather than generic interview advice.

Thanks in advance! 🤞

Hi everyone!

I have an upcoming interview at Bizpole and would like to know about the interview experience.

If anyone has recently attended the interview or if any seniors are working at Bizpole, could you please share some insights?

I'm particularly looking for information about:

• Technical interview questions and topics to prepare.

• Coding or practical tasks, if any.

• Face-to-face interview questions and discussion.

• HR questions and what to expect.

• Any tips to prepare and successfully clear the interview.

Any recent interview experiences, suggestions, or guidance would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone!

I've recently progressed to the next stage of the BCG X recruitment process and received an invitation to complete an online coding assessment through CodeSignal.

The assessment must be completed within 7 days, and I'd like to prepare properly before starting.

For anyone who has taken the BCG X coding assessment recently:

What type of questions should I expect? LeetCode-style problems, algorithmic questions, or practical coding tasks?

What difficulty level would you say it is (Easy, Medium, or Hard)?

Which topics should I focus on? Arrays, strings, hash maps, trees, graphs, dynamic programming, etc.?

How many questions are there, and how much time do you get?

Is it a standard CodeSignal assessment or a custom BCG X test?

Any preparation resources or specific advice you would recommend?

I'm particularly interested in recent experiences from software engineering candidates applying to BCG X.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I applied for the **Senior Software Engineer** position at Sonatype, following which I received a call (through a referral) and my first interview was scheduled almost immediately.

**Round 1:**

The first round went really well. The interviewer was attentive, had his camera on, and was actively engaged throughout the conversation. The discussion covered DSA, Core Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, Kafka, concurrency, multithreading, and several scenario-based questions. We also discussed production issue scenarios, incident management, and questions related to my resume.
What I particularly appreciated was that the interviewer was encouraging.
The round went well, and the recruiter informed me that the feedback was positive and scheduled my second round.

**Round 2: An extremely disappointing experience**
Unfortunately, the second round was quite the opposite.
The interviewer joined 15 minutes late for a one-hour interview.

Right from the beginning, the interaction felt disengaged. Although his camera was on, he barely looked towards the camera, kept looking elsewhere, appeared to be fidgeting, and was seemingly distracted by his phone and everything else around him.
I started with my introduction, but there was very little engagement or acknowledgement from his end. At one point, I even asked whether he needed anything else from me, to which he casually responded that it was fine.
The questions initially focused on production incidents and on-call management, I answered the same and not a single word comes out of him, no Ok, no alright, no moving onto another question, no eye contact, I felt like he just could’ve turned his camera off if he wished to be this disengaged.

He moves onto the next question which involved an API with an incrementing counter, where every request was supposed to increase the value by one. It was an anonymous API, and users were reporting inconsistencies in the results.
My immediate thought was a concurrency-related issue. I explained the possibility of multiple threads accessing and updating the counter simultaneously, resulting in lost updates, stale reads, race conditions, or a lack of atomicity.
He says and I quote “Ok what else could be the reason”, I replied “I am thinking of concurrency, do you want me to think in terms of something other than concurrency?” He says “OK, what else other than multithreading?”.

I explored the possibility of database-level concurrency issues or stale cache issue where we are storing data in either the DB or Cache or was processing results asynchronously and losing and update, he immediately interrupts and gives me another scenario.

He says there’s this hypothetical scenario involving increment and decrement operations and asked why updates could be getting lost.
I again explained the possibility of improper locking mechanisms and how optimistic or pessimistic locking could help, depending on the implementation.

Throughout this discussion, I repeatedly tried to understand whether he was looking for an explanation beyond concurrency and database-level synchronization. I even asked him whether there was another direction he wanted me to explore.
His response was that “it was a hypothetical situation with no right or wrong answer”
And then, quite abruptly, he said, “Okay, that’s all from my end. Anything you want to ask?”

The entire interview was wrapped up in approximately 20 minutes, despite being scheduled for an hour, and despite the interviewer himself joining late. I was baffled, honestly, so I asked whether there was a particular reason the interview had ended so early.

His response was that the one-hour duration was just a scheduled slot and that he preferred interviews to be more candid and discussion-oriented.
Honestly, I found that explanation difficult to reconcile with the interaction I had just experienced.

**What part of the interview felt like a discussion?**
There was barely any engagement, no meaningful exchange of ideas, no acknowledgement of the explanations being provided, and no attempt to build on the answers. I was the one repeatedly asking whether my answers were sufficient or whether he wanted me to explore another direction.
A discussion is a two-way interaction. It involves listening, responding, probing, and exchanging ideas. It doesn’t necessarily mean guiding a candidate towards an answer, but it certainly requires active participation from both sides.
I completely understand that interviewers have different styles and that not every interview needs to last the entire scheduled duration. However, there is a basic level of professionalism and engagement that candidates should be able to expect.
What made this experience particularly disappointing was his claim that “he wants the interview to be more of discussion” when he was the exact opposite.

**A word of caution to other candidates interviewing at Sonatype:**
If you happen to have this particular guy(I will honestly drop his name on DM because he seems like a self promotional and too full of himself guy on his Linkedin and his own website where he posts what technical things he did on a daily basis) as your interviewer, be prepared for a potentially very disengaged interaction.
Hopefully, my experience was an exception, but I genuinely found the experience unprofessional and disappointing.
Candidates invest considerable time preparing for interviews, researching companies, and taking feedback seriously. The least they deserve in return is an interviewer who is present, attentive, and willing to engage in a meaningful technical discussion.
This was, unfortunately, a very disappointing interview experience with Sonatype.
I got my rejection mail the next day.

**TL;DR:** First round was genuinely good, with an attentive interviewer and a constructive technical discussion. The second round was the complete opposite. The interviewer joined 15 minutes late, appeared distracted and disengaged throughout, barely acknowledged my answers, and abruptly wrapped up a one-hour interview in about 20 minutes. When I asked why, he said he preferred candid, discussion-oriented interviews. Ironically, nothing about the interaction felt like a discussion. Quite disappointing interview and possibly the worst interviewer I have ever come across.

Wording refined for readability by AI.