I interviewed at LinkedIn (Sunnyvale, CA) in Jul 2015
Interview
I Applied through a recruiter. Recruiter was polite and helpful. Recruiter explained the process and sent some preparation material for reference. After 2.5 weeks one phone round was arranged. Interviewer started by asking a brief introduction, present and past job experience, challenges faced in work etc. Then he asked to solve a coding problem pasted on collabedit. I used python to solve it. Question was not difficult, though I made a small mistake in code. Then he asked If I have any questions for him. Total time of phone call was around 50 minutes.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a nested list of integers, return the sum of all integers in the list weighted by their depth
For example, given the list {{1,1},2,{1,1}} the function should return 10 (four 1's at depth 2, one 2 at depth 1)
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.