Tell me about a time you led a cross-functional team.

"I interviewed for an M1 Engineering Manager role, and the process included a screening round first, followed by the main loop. The screening consisted of one broad behavioral interview and one system design interview, in which I could choose between machine learning systems, software systems, and products; I chose machine learning. In the main loop, I had another ML system design round, a project deep dive, a team management interview, another behavioral round, and an AI-assisted coding interview. The AI-assisted coding piece was the newest part of the process for me, but the bigger surprise was how behaviorally heavy the EM loop was. My main takeaway is that they expect you to provide depth on your own, even if the interviewer isn't especially good at eliciting it."

"I originally applied for a different Netflix role, got rejected at the application stage, and then about two weeks later a recruiter reached out to me about this EM opening on the tooling side. Honestly, it was way easier than I expected because almost all of it was based on my actual experience instead of abstract or super theoretical questions. I had around 10 discussions if you count the recruiter bookends, with manager screens, behavioral rounds, one system design, a final block, and lunch with the team. The only round that really threw me was system design because they gave me no drawing tool and then got unexpectedly deep on recommendation signals like hover-over behavior. I got the offer, but I ended up going with a different company."

"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."