Tell me about a project you worked on.

"Overall, the interview process was smooth and well-structured. The interviewers were friendly and gave me a good opportunity to explain my experience and approach to problem-solving. I felt the conversations were engaging, although a few questions were challenging and required me to think on my feet."

"My interview process included a recruiter screen, technical coding interviews, and a final behavioral and problem-solving round. What went well was that the interviewers were clear, collaborative, and gave me opportunities to explain my thinking. I also felt strong when discussing tradeoffs and working through ambiguous problems. What did not go as well was my time management on one coding question—I spent too long refining my first approach instead of moving quickly to a working solution. Overall, the process was challenging but positive, and it helped me identify areas to improve."

"I interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer role on the apps side, and the process was a short recruiter call, one standard coding screen, and then a five-round onsite. The biggest thing that stood out was that every interview had two people in it, usually one leading and one shadowing, so it felt like they were calibrating in real time. The onsite mixed normal coding and backend system design with an AI coding round in HackerRank where I had to use their built-in assistant to debug and build out a maze problem. The technical communication round was much more casual than I expected and ended after about 30 minutes because the interviewer said he had what he needed. I finished the full loop but didn't get an offer."

"The process overall was very thorough. They are looking for more technically leaning PMs who are familiar with AI tools and landscape at this time."

"I got in through a referral, had a lightweight recruiter call, then an initial coding screen, and then a five-round final. The final was two coding rounds, one system design, one past-project round that turned into a behavioral deep dive, and one straight behavioral. What stood out was how much Uber cared about technical depth over polished cross-functional storytelling, especially for a staff role. Even the coding rounds felt like they wanted system-design-style tradeoff thinking, and they gave me the Number of Islands variant in the final coding round."

"It started well, but at some point I was rushing through, so I had to take sometime and relax. I needed to clearly articulate my thoughts process well. Definitely use the STAR method in your preparation, it really worked for me"

"I got reached out to on LinkedIn and went through the full loop for a Senior Data Scientist role in San Francisco, targeting around L5. The process was recruiter screen, a 48-hour take-home data challenge, a one-hour technical review of that challenge plus AI-code debugging, a hiring manager screen on one of my past projects, and then a four-interview final panel. Overall it felt more like a strong big tech data science process than some completely different AI-company thing, except they clearly assumed I was comfortable using AI tools and reading machine-generated code. Everyone asked some version of why OpenAI, so there was a slight missionary vibe, but safety and ethics mostly showed up later with PM and leadership. I made it all the way through and did not get the offer."

"I got sourced by a contractor first and then handed off to an actual OpenAI recruiter, which was a little unusual but pretty smooth. The process was a recruiter screen, then a first technical screen with one system design and one coding round, then a virtual onsite with only two more technicals plus behavioral, cross-functional behavioral, and a project deep dive. What stood out most was that the coding wasn't really LeetCode-shaped even though that was the prep guidance I got. The whole loop felt much more practical and scale-heavy than expected, and the project deep dive was easily the most probing part because they kept asking what I actually did and why. My main takeaway was that they want strong generalist problem solvers more than people who just memorize interview patterns."

"I got sourced by a contractor first and then handed off to an actual OpenAI recruiter, which was a little unusual but pretty smooth. The process was a recruiter screen, then a first technical screen with one system design and one coding round, then a virtual onsite with only two more technicals plus behavioral, cross-functional behavioral, and a project deep dive. What stood out most was that the coding wasn't really LeetCode-shaped even though that was the prep guidance I got. The whole loop felt much more practical and scale-heavy than expected, and the project deep dive was easily the most probing part because they kept asking what I actually did and why. My main takeaway was that they want strong generalist problem solvers more than people who just memorize interview patterns."

"I applied on the careers site with no referral, and the recruiter was in my inbox quickly, so the whole process started fast. The loop was a 15-minute recruiter call, then a phone design round, then a five-round onsite with system design, coding, project deep dive, behavioral, and a separate culture round. Everybody was responsive and genuinely nice, and the process felt way more efficient than most big tech loops, but the bar also felt extremely high. The AI-looking technical questions were mostly normal infra questions if I abstracted them correctly, but the coding round blindsided me because it was a practical project exercise, not the multithreaded coding problem I had prepared for. I came out feeling good about everything except coding, and I ended up rejected with zero feedback."

"I got in through a referral, and the process was a recruiter screen, one LeetCode-style technical screen, then an onsite that included a take-home plus three 1-hour rounds. For a startup, it felt weirdly mature and standardized, more like big tech: everyone I met was in the agent engineering org, the recruiter was polished, and they were even fine with me pushing the coding screen out by over a month. The phone screen was a pretty standard cycle-detection problem dressed up as an Excel question, and then the take-home was much more job-relevant because I had to build a small customer support agent and think about prioritization, metrics, and observability. Most of the loop felt friendly and professional, but the big gotcha was a TypeScript and React debugging round that they framed as conceptual even though I think you really do need to know that stack to pass it. I didn't get the offer, and honestly I think that debugging round was the reason because the rest of the process felt solid."

"A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, and the process started with a very basic recruiter screen that was mostly just a resume walkthrough and interest in DoorDash. Round one was a two-part screen: 30 minutes of SQL and a case on cold food arriving at customers. The SQL interviewer was extremely blunt, stating that he only cared about whether I got the right answer. After that, they team matched me before the final, which I hadn't really seen before, and I got matched to the new verticals area. The final loop was four interviews across two days with one business partner and three data scientists, and most of it was product analytics case work on metrics, segmentation, funnels, and A/B testing rather than deep theory. The most difficult part for me was the hiring manager round because she started at such a high level that it was hard to know where to anchor the answer."

"I ended up on the senior-and-up version of the loop because I had a project deep dive in addition to the coding rounds. The big surprise was that the SWE process was not mathy or brainteaser-heavy at all. It was mostly long, collaborative coding interviews where they start with one implementation problem and keep building on it, plus a pretty probing project discussion full of why questions. Almost every onsite round had two interviewers, but it felt more like a carefully run collaborative session than a pile-on. My overall impression was that the bar was high and the interview design was very intentional."

"focus more on business sense as compared to technical details (though equally important) the process was very fast"

"The process was fairly straightforward, although the company at the time was very focused on hiring people with the right values. They had a specific "credos" round, with a long-time employee who's focused on making sure you exhibit their top values/credos. The take-home case study was relatively straightforward for someone with an analytical/finance background."