Pinterest onsite done, still no word
Pinterest onsite done, still no word
Just wrapped up the full SWE loop for Pinterest, 5 rounds, haven't heard anything yet.
Phone screen was a straightforward coding problem, went fine.
Onsite kicked off with Escape Room, tracking players moving through rooms plus a leaderboard on top of it, heap based. Got it working but the top-k part ate more time than I wanted. Second coding round was a graph traversal thing, medium, no real issues.
Two system design rounds after that. First was a notification system, pretty standard. Second was a leaderboard by category, then they pushed for a real-time version on top of the batch one and wanted the tradeoffs spelled out.
BQ at the end was mentoring, conflict, nothing new.
Interviewers were a mix, one walked me through everything, one barely said ten words the whole 45 minutes.
Recruiter mentioned 1-2 weeks for a decision. YOE: 4. Honestly no clue how this one went.
Replies (4)
rip on the quiet interviewer, I had one of those too and it's so hard to read the room
good luck, hope you hear back soon
how bad was the top-k part on escape room? that's the round I'm most worried about for my screen next week
honestly not terrible once you realize entry order is the tiebreaker, just took me longer than it should have under pressure
had a similar two SD round setup a few months back, the real-time follow-up on the leaderboard one is a real step up from the base version, worth practicing that pivot
yeah I've seen a few posts mention the double SD thing, seems to be the norm now