I’ve just recently interviewed with Instacart, and even though I aced the 2 coding interviews (with 15min spare each), and did ok in system design and behavioral, I still got a “reject”. The recruiter ghosted me after reject email, so I couldn’t find out why I failed the interview so that I can improve for next time. Is the bar that high at Instacart? I’m very excited after the interview and was surprised of the result. I’m just very upset so I’m venting here 🙁 TC: 200, yoe 4 Position interviewed for: L4
Sorry to hear! Looking back, what do you think could have gone wrong? There would be some reason, right?
The behavioral went smooth and we talked through a lot of good stuff. The system design is ok. It was a basic question in grok (with some disguise), so it’s hard to tell which one I failed.
I know they ghosted you but might be worth it to try to reach out again to see what went wrong
😔 the recruiters here ghost (or more, forget) way more than they should.
I’d say for coding, BR and design part the bar would be lower than Amazon, I suppose you raised some red flags during the process, for example not communicate well during the coding part
If that’s the case maybe you’re right. I did talked nonstop while coding and the interviews didn’t ask much. But maybe in the BR, I raised some red flag that the principal engineer caught. I was talking about past exp and said couldn’t say more due to confidentiality reason. That’s maybe related... IMO, I didn’t do as well in the Amazon interviews comparing to Instacart, but still got in 🤷♂️
> IMO, I didn’t do as well in the Amazon interviews comparing to Instacart, but still got in 🤷♂️ That’s partly why luck is involved. Sometimes you feel like you did well and don’t get it, sometimes you feel like you did so-so and so get it
Coding questions sometimes have multiple parts. Did you get through all parts?
Same experience with doing well in interview, I got ghosted too. Don’t sweat too much.
How long did it take for the recruiter to come back with the result?
Around 3 days
Was your sys design interviewer a staff engineer?
Hi @TsVd74 - what kind of questions asked during coding ?
I went through the loop and cracked the coding and systems design interviews and got rejected. lllloooll it makes no sense to me. To be honest I don't care too much as I wasn't thinking of accepting it anyways but just going through all this to get rejected makes me wonder what is the reason for them to make people waste their time? In my case they were useful in my preparation towards G and FB
You win some you lose some. Move on.
I’m sorry that you had a poor experience, recruiter ghosting you is a shitty thing to do. Interviews are a luck thing for the most part and sadly luck didn’t play out this time. I wouldn’t overthink this and keep trying at more places! You only need one dream job to work out (every 2-4 years in this industry LOL)
Thanks. I thought this was my luck cuz the coding questions were easy, but I guess it’s not my luck yet.