I applied online. I interviewed at LinkedIn in Apr 2016
Interview
I interviewed with LinkedIn for a software engineering position in April. My interview experience was mixed; some of the interviewers came across as knowledgeable and articulate, while others were one or the other. There were times when the interviewer's poor communication skills hindered my ability to have a meaningful discussion with them. Overall, the interview process at LinkedIn left me with mixed feelings due to a lack of consistency in the quality of the interviewers. I hope they fix this, because it seems like a great place to work.
The interview process started with a screening round featuring one LeetCode medium problem and an SQL challenge. This was followed by a comprehensive onsite with five rounds: a LeetCode coding challenge, an SQL assessment, a system design interview, a hiring manager conversation to evaluate cultural fit, and finally a team matching phase to find the right team.
Interviewed for an SDE role. The process was well-organized and the recruiters were responsive throughout. That said, the technical rounds were significantly more challenging than expected — definitely come prepared to go deep. Overall a valuable experience regardless of the outcome.
That was a real stroke of luck — when I got to the coding round and encountered a question on finding the maximum subarray sum, I had literally seen this exact problem on prachub.com a few days earlier. The interview kicked off with a recruiter screen, followed by a technical phone interview. It was intense, especially with the focus on algorithms and data structures. I also faced some behavioral questions that challenged my experience. After a final onsite round, I received an offer and happily accepted. Overall, it was tough but rewarding.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an integer array nums, find the contiguous subarray (containing at least one number) which has the largest sum and return its sum. Walk through Kadane's algorithm and explain the O(n) approach.