I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2017
Interview
Applied online then the recruiter set up a technical phone screening with an engineer there. I passed the first one so they scheduled another but I didn't pass the second one. The second engineer had a weirdly worded question so I believe I failed the interview based on the wording of the question. It was hard to understand what was being asked of me rather than the code complexity.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Given users with locations in a list and a logged in user with locations... find their travel buddies (people who shared more than half of your locations).
Received an email from the recruiter with some helpful tips how to prepare. I have not been practicing leetcode questions but the one I got was easy... if it was in python (was not an option)
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb in Oct 2019
Interview
After the university Hackerrank test, I received an email in about a week to do a 90-minutes phone interview. The questions were moderately tough compared to other FAANGULTAD interviews.
The first interview went well and I was able to come up with a working solution within the given timeframe. The interviewer seemed to be satisfied with the solution and I proceeded to the second round. The second interview didn't go as expected though. The interviewer was nice but was inexperienced at interviewing candidates. I usually try to brainstorm a few ideas, discuss my solutions with the interviewer, and pick the best solution and code it up. However, whenever I verbally expressed my thought process, the interviewer intervened and asked if this is the best and tried to nudge me down towards his way of thinking. I really appreciate that he was trying to help, but not everyone's thought process works the same. I could've ultimately arrived at the same optimized solution but because the interviewer kept interrupting throughout my initial brainstorming stage, my thoughts got tangled up and did not perform too well. I was able to get to a working solution, but I think the second interviewer was dissatisfied that I couldn't think in his way immediately. I think Airbnb should train interviewers better to get the most out of their candidates.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Dec 2018
Interview
Hacker rank -> virtual onsite -> onsite. They usually got back within a week of the interview. The technical questions varied a lot but were usually difficult. The office is really great!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Talk about how your life relates to airbnb core values.