airbnb | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
The interview process included several rounds focusing on different aspects of software engineering. The candidate discussed a chess game using APIs and WebSockets, particularly how to handle user disconnections and retrieving missing history. The coding round featured a challenging problem related to skiing, which is a graph-related question. The candidate felt unprepared for this question and struggled with several test cases. The code review process was similar to what was expected, where finding bugs was encouraged but not mandatory. Behavioral questions were also part of the interview, with one manager being particularly critical and interruptive, which affected the candidate’s mood during the discussion.
Technical Questions
- Dynamic Programming - Minimum Menu Order Cost II
- Graph Theory - Maximum Ski Score (Skiing problem)
- Depth First Search - Related to the chess game scenario
Tips & Insights
The coding questions at Airbnb are notably challenging, often at a hard difficulty level. It is advisable to focus preparation on difficult coding problems.