Airbnb rejection

Hack2hire Community · 2026-05-19T12:00:00.025Z

Airbnb rejection Result: Rejected Number of Rounds: 5 Phone screen was the bank account system. Deposit, withdraw, and transaction history with binary search components. Tight on time. VO was 4 rounds. Coding: House Robber III variant (got it working, wrote test cases) and the booking/split stay problem (DFS with memoization, early termination logic is where I lost time). System design was the chat system. Covered schema in detail, WebSocket routing across servers, TopN cap for large groups with...

User-taszt2d ago

Interview Experiencesairbnb

248

Replies (4)

system_design_comm2d ago

communication style is genuinely what Airbnb weights. not just correctness. you can cover everything technically and still miss

User-ur4d32d ago

5 YOE at Airbnb senior is genuinely a high bar. distributed systems background helps but doesn't guarantee it.

websocket_wanderer2d ago

did you get into fan-out vs pull model for the chat system? that's usually where the senior bar shows up

schema_first_dev2d ago

yes, covered fan-out on write with TopN cap for large groups and fallback to pull above a threshold. thought the tradeoff discussion was solid.

house_robber_42d ago

the booking/split stay early termination trips people up. how far did you get before time ran out?

schema_first_dev2d ago

got the base case and most of the memoization working. the pruning logic was where I lost time. had the right idea but didn't finish clean.

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