Eightfold Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process started with a screening round where one DSA problem was asked. This was followed by a coding round featuring two DSA problems. Then came the design round, which included one LLD problem and one HLD problem. Finally, there was a Hiring Manager round that involved one HLD problem and some behavioural questions.

The interview process was not great. I reached out to the CEO on LinkedIn who then arranged an interview with a software engineer. The CEO asked me to pick a time, and I did, but then the interviewer emailed me asking me to choose between two specific time slots, both odd times (8-9 am or 7-9 pm), trying to avoid the CEOs knowing about the limited choices. I refused to pick and asked him to suggest a time, and he eventually got me to agree to 8-9 am on Tuesday. He was 10 minutes late for the call and seemed inexperienced. He couldn't explain his questions clearly and rushed me throughout the interview. He gave me a LeetCode hard question (sliding window maximum) and expected a solution in under 20 minutes, asking for the runtime complexity before I even started coding. I solved it in O(n) time. He asked me to explain the code, and even though he initially said it wouldn't work, he let me run it. I had a few syntax errors which I fixed on the call. The code eventually ran successfully. He kept reminding me of the time left (15, 10, 5 mins) and that we were already past the scheduled time, which added to the pressure. My friend had a good experience interning in 2019, so it really depends on the interviewer. Despite solving a hard problem quickly, I got rejected, though I later got an offer from a top company.

I was contacted on LinkedIn by the CTO for a UI position. I told him I'm only frontend and haven't used React in a while, but he said that was okay and they needed a frontend engineer. So I agreed to interview and got a take-home project with a 24-hour deadline. I finished it and then went on-site. The CTO couldn't make it, so I interviewed with the team. The co-founder invited me back the next week to discuss the company roadmap and meet the CTO. Another week later, I met the CTO who then told me he wanted a full-stack engineer, not just frontend. This whole process took 3 weeks and 3 on-sites, which was a waste of my time since they advertised a frontend role but wanted full-stack, even after I told them my specialty.