It was as follows:
(1) When I asked how I could be of service at LinkedIn, the interviewer could not answer the question, stating they were not sure whether I would be filling an entry-level role or a senior role.
(2) It was difficult to understand the interviewer’s accent.
(3) I was given the same question I was asked ten years ago: How do you test whether two binary trees are mirror images, for which the entry-level coder's answer would be something hideous like:
==============================================
bool isMirror(Node* tree1, Node* tree2)
{
bool ret_val = false;
if(tree1 != null && tree2 != null)
{
ret_val = (tree1->m_data == tree2->m_data) &&
isMirror(tree1->m_lhs, tree2->m_rhs) && isMirror(tree1->m_rhs, tree2->m_lhs);
}
return (tree1 == null && tree2 == null) ? true : tret_val;
}
==============================================
(4) The interviewer did not want an iterative solution that avoided stack overflows and made better use of CPU cache, much less a PhD with physics and maths skills.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you apply quantum mechanics to data mining? Sadly, the interviewer did not seem to know the answer to a very basic question that even the most mediocre physics undergraduate could answer in under five minutes.
The phone screen was more intense than I'd anticipated, lasting about 45 minutes with a mix of behavioral and technical questions. They probed my understanding of system design, specifically challenging me to think through a notification delivery service. I felt prepared, thanks to the company-specific questions I found on PracHub that outlined similar scenarios. The final rounds focused heavily on the scalability and reliability of systems. After a series of interviews, I received an offer, which I happily accepted. Overall, it was a rigorous but rewarding experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design LinkedIn's notification fan-out service that delivers post-engagement notifications (e.g. someone reacted to your post or commented on your article) to millions of subscribers in near real-time, including how you would handle 'hotspot' creators with millions of followers, deduplicate redundant notifications when many actions target the same content, and guarantee at-least-once delivery across regional failures.
I applied online. I interviewed at LinkedIn (San Francisco, CA) in Mar 2026
Interview
Had an initial phone screen round-
Questions - Regular Medium level question, string manipulation
Follow up - Concurrency related on top of the first question.
Waiting for the second round right now
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at LinkedIn (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
Was greeted by a person who basically walked me around the office during my interview, did a couple of rounds with a group on a whiteboard solving a coding challenge, and one to solve a software architecture challenge. Had lunch onsite. And one round of interview with someone who wasn't technical.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write the code to generate an English language rendition of any integer up to 100,000,000.