Interview at Twitch: Experience
Few months back I interviewed at Twitch for SSE. Experience. Screening: Asked to solve 1 Easy and 1 Hard LC problem in 20 min. Solved both in 10 minutes as I had seen the Hard problem already on LC. Result: Cleared. Onsite: 3 rounds of LC and 1 System design. All 3 rounds were given Hard LC problems to be solved in 20-25 minutes. Solved 2. Stuck at one: https://leetcode.com/problems/find-the-shortest-superstring/description/. This question had different wording in the interview. Will bow my head to those who can hear this problem for the first time, understand and then solve it within 30 minutes. System Design: How streaming works for a high traffic platform. No experience on streaming before. A lot of time wasted in discussing and understanding how ABR works. I heard the ABR word for the first time. Result: LOL. You know. Feeling: 1. Sometimes I feel they really have a high bar. 2. Sometimes I feel it was unfair to expect ABR from the interviewee. 3. Sometimes I feel embarrassed because of how I blew the LC problem round. 4. Overall I feel like shit. Disclosures and fun facts: 1. Solved all hard problems within time limits because I knew those problems already (screening and onsite). 2. Regarding superstring LC problem, interviewer told me at the end that this problem can be solved by binary tree. After an hour of googling and finding respective problem in LC, all solutions suggestions used DP 😄😄 and not tree. 3. I blew the system design, actually thinking to myself "Dude, they don't want you. You are good". I had no fucking idea what was happening in the round.
LeetCode
Lol at being asked hards in all the rounds.
Sounds too hard.
Honestly? You got shafted. IMO 3 LC hard problems to be solved in 25 minutes is bullshit for a Senior engineer. Should be design focused There’s a ton of luck involved in the process. You were unlucky. Now you know what ABR is and you’ll be in a better place to ace the next interview
Yes, have learnt ABR now from a YouTube video in decent depth.
One fact is the assholes that ended up asking you those questions are no better lol. They just feel entitled because they are "interviewing" you. They don't realize that they're just another bunch of corporate slaves
You applied for a job at Twitch without researching into streaming technologies? Basic error.
Which team/org was it?
Not sure.
How come u knew all the hard problems already? Do they ask straight from LC? And may i know which team u were interviewing with?
I practiced around 250+ LC problems. Yes, you will know the questions are from LC with experience. Not sure about the team.
Tf are these companies thinking?