Finally solved the cake BFS question and still got rejected from Snowflake
So I just got off the phone with the recruiter and it's a no. Kinda gutted tbh because I genuinely thought I did well.
Some background: 3 YOE, currently at a mid-size fintech doing backend work. Had been low-key preparing for a few months and Snowflake felt like a solid step up. Applied through a referral from a friend who works there, recruiter got back to me pretty fast.
Phone screen 1: Standard coding round. Got the classic 2D grid BFS problem, the one where you find minimum distances between cakes and people. I had actually seen this one before (it's in the question bank honestly), so I knew multi-source BFS was the move. Coded it up cleanly, walked through edge cases, interviewer seemed fine. No feedback during the round, just "we'll be in touch."
Phone screen 2: Second round, different interviewer. Another BFS variant, this time more like the Walls and Gates setup but with Desks and Bathrooms. Got to optimal solution in maybe 15 minutes, talked through the complexity. Here's where it got frustrating: he kept pushing on my approach like I had the wrong solution. I asked for a counterexample and he just said "think about it more." I still think my solution was correct.
Got a call from recruiter a few days later saying the feedback was "mixed" and they wanted a third coding round. I said sure. Third round actually went the smoothest, topological sort variant, finished early, interviewer was chill.
Then nothing for two weeks. I followed up twice. Finally got a call today saying they're moving forward with other candidates. Feedback: "third round wasn't strong enough."
I'm a little speechless honestly. Solved the problems, did the extra round they asked for, and still no. Back to grinding I guess.
Anyone else had this experience with Snowflake? Feels like you could solve everything and it still wouldn't matter.
YOE: 3 TC: 0 (for now lol)
Replies (6)
Same exact thing happened to me last year. Two rounds, solved both, got the mixed feedback call, did a third, then silence. "Not strong enough" is their standard line I think.
Sorry to hear this. I've seen a lot of posts about Snowflake rejecting candidates who clearly solved the problems. Their rubric must be more than just correctness.
Curious, did you do multi-source BFS from all cake positions simultaneously or from each person individually? Just trying to understand if there was anything that could have caused confusion.
Multi-source from all cakes at once, which gives you O(N*M) overall. That's the standard approach. The interviewer never said what was wrong, just kept asking if I was sure.
Two weeks of silence after the third round tells you everything. They already knew the answer and just forgot to close the loop. Frustrating but not uncommon.
Snowflake loop is rough. The third round ask is a red flag imo, means at least one interviewer gave you a no and they're trying to override it. Doesn't usually end well.
The inflexible interviewer on round 2 is a known thing at Snowflake. I had one too who wouldn't accept my BFS solution and just kept saying there was an issue. No counterexample, nothing.
Yeah that part really got to me. How are you supposed to improve when they won't even tell you what was wrong?