airbnb | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
I interviewed with a team from the Database Infrastructure. The process included a coding round and a system design round. The coding interview was conducted by a Korean interviewer, where I was required to communicate directly without an interface. I successfully wrote and executed the final test, but the follow-up discussion was somewhat chaotic. The HR feedback aligned with the interviewer’s comments, indicating that I did not pass this round.
The system design interview was led by a female interviewer who focused on job scheduling. She primarily asked about database sharding and expressed confusion regarding the visibility and delay schedules of AWS SQS. I explained these concepts thoroughly, but the interviewer did not engage much in the conversation. The final HR feedback indicated that this round was also unsuccessful due to a lack of effective communication and failure to analyze failure scenarios and trade-offs.
Technical Questions
- Maximum Candies You Can Get from Boxes (Coding)
- System Design (Database Sharding, AWS SQS)
Tips & Insights
I made a positive impression on HR, and they mentioned they would reach out if there are future openings. I was very motivated to join Airbnb and prepared extensively for the interviews, but unfortunately, I did not succeed this time.