Mad respect for the interviewer

Had a telephonic interview for L5A position at Uber. I took 3 weeks to prepare to revisit and grind my leetcode lists. Did tons of problems since I heard they ask hard questions. But to my surprise, he didn’t ask a single coding question, I didn’t even open codesignal!

He started off the discussion with a very simple problem and then gradually built upon it layer by layer to the point where sometimes I realized how shallow my understanding was in areas I thought I knew a lot about. I didn’t completely bomb it but definitely wasn’t a flawless where you’d answer every single question.

I might not make it but it’s refreshing to know that there are some, who take real interviews rather than just a stupid LC quiz. The reason I’m saying that is because the way he conducted the interview, I can’t possibly think of a way someone can game it. We covered so much of computer science in one hour from various different directions. At times, he’d even explain concepts on a whiteboard if I do not know and from there he’d probe how I can think of a solution. This fucking never happened in any other interview!!! By the time interview ended, I had so many things that I know I should read more about. And for that, I have a mad respect for him ✊🏻

TC: 140, yoe: 5.5

Update: Didn’t make it. Didn’t get any feedback but I guess it’s because of the lack of depth in my understanding of some areas of distributed systems. Couple of times I found myself hitting a wall and tried to answer based on what would I do since I didn’t have much knowledge about those things. I still believe anyone with good enough critical thinking would be able to derive a way to solve such scenarios. I guess I fell short there. I just wasn’t ready for such interview and basically was on a surprise test (I was told I’ll get coding exercise :/)

Overall, I’m glad I spent an hour, would definitely interview again with the same team with hopefully similar kind of interview.

Edit: First of all, thanks a lot for your wonderful comments. I loved each and every feedback, thankful to this community ❤️ I think I shouldn’t have excluded my experience from abroad prior to my masters. I see a lot of comments about it, rightfully so. If I include that, it becomes 5.5 years plus about a year long internship during masters, but in US, I basically started off from 0 after masters. Hence updating it, although it looks quite disconnected from TC that I make rn lol. Hope you all have a great weekend and a happy new year :)