I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest in Jun 2018
Interview
Recruiter reached out to me regarding a position in Web Ads Team. Phone Screen was very easy. I was asked a dynamic programming problem which involved recursion with memoization. Within 20 min of the interview, I had the most optimal code. The interviewer wasted the time by adding additional test cases to make sure the code works. He was frustrated when he realized all test cases have passed. He was fretting that he couldn't believe it. Before the interview was to conclude, he asked me another simple leetcode problem, and after I told my approach and started coding, the interviewer asked me to stop as it was 60 minutes into the interview. The interview concluded. Got reject the next day !
Surprisingly easy compared to what I expected from a company like Pinterest. The technical interview consisted of two coding questions, one about reconstructing routes from unordered travel tickets and another on implementing a Sparse Matrix class. Honestly, I felt a bit underwhelmed. What helped me most in prep was studying the case studies on PracHub, which gave me good frameworks to think through problems. I did get an offer, but I ultimately declined because I was looking for a more challenging environment.
Recruiter call, tech round, onsite and rejection call. They sent me an email about a week after the last onsite and asked me to schedule a call on the same day. I scheduled a call to listen 30 second long rejection notice. A half of interview rounds were horrible. Interviewers were not prepared and arrogant.
1st round technical phone screening with in 1 hour.
One follow up question was asked.
The problem was not too hard, but it requires you finish really fast without bugs.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Leetcode 1564. Put Boxes Into the Warehouse I.
Follow up: what is maximum total box sizes.