Whatnot Software Engineer interview questions

Telephonic Conversation with Manager Initial Briefing with Recruiter on Technical Rounds Virtual On-Site Assessment Comprising Two 45-Minute Coding Rounds and One Design Round During the course of my interactions with the interview panel, I engaged in a substantive conversation with the hiring manager in order to assess my suitability for the position. It was evident that their objectives closely aligned with my expertise and professional background. Additionally, I participated in a comprehensive design interview and completed two coding rounds during the virtual on-site assessment, wherein I successfully addressed two problems within the allotted 45-minute time frame for each. While I acknowledge that the solutions I presented may not have been LeetCode optimal, they were, in fact, functional, produced the correct outputs, and meticulously covered the requisite edge cases. Despite my strong performance during the interviews, I was ultimately not selected for the position, leaving me somewhat puzzled regarding the decision. It is possible that the expectations were geared towards the provision of a flawless LeetCode-style solution in a single iteration. This appears rather hypocritical, given the acknowledgment by the interviewers themselves of the considerable technical debt within their tech stack, which often necessitates revisions to address suboptimal code written by previous contributors. Consequently, it strikes me as somewhat immature to dismiss an engineer who effectively demonstrated the ability to debug and optimize code to arrive at a final solution within the prescribed time limits. Notwithstanding the outcome, I must commend the recruiting team for their remarkable efficiency and responsiveness throughout the recruitment process.

First, there were two rounds with Karat. These consisted of an OA which was more like a multiple choice quiz, and a 2-question LC easy-med interview done by a third-party interviewer. After that, I'd say the process "properly" started. I had a recruiter call, LC easy-med interview round, and the final round, which consisted of 2 algo interviews and a manager chat. I also needed to provide references (through a third party service called Searchlight). There were a couple of hiccups in the interview process: the Karat "quiz" round seemed a little silly, and the people I put as references told me they weren't really able to understand the point of it (questions were apparently very mundane). These are small nits and my recruiter was amazing and always made herself available to answer questions. It really felt like she wanted to see me do well which I think is a bit rare. Also, I enjoyed meeting everyone I talked to during the interview process, huge part of why I decided to sign.