NODAL EXCHANGE Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

A recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn, and instead of scheduling a recruiter screen, they tried to call me randomly for three days straight, or would say they would call and then not. Eventually, the hiring manager was interested, so we set up a technical interview. The recruiter sent a list of times, I picked one that worked, and they scheduled it for a time they hadn't even offered. The technical interview was super technical and hard. The interviewer seemed condescending. She asked about hashmap time complexity, and when I guessed, she sounded skeptical, making me feel dumb. Then she asked about my undergrad and if they taught me data structures. After, I checked and wasn't wrong, so I don't know why she doubted me. There was live coding, not LeetCode style. I followed up after 1.5 weeks and the recruiter said they wanted another interview and sent times. I replied with my availability, and then heard nothing back.

It kicked off with an online problem-solving test that was pretty abstract. Then, there was a coding challenge in Java where I had to implement an elevator system, aiming to get the cycle rate below their threshold. After that, I was invited onsite for a four-hour stretch of in-person interviews. I met with several team members who asked a mix of brain teasers and detailed questions about Java and my past work. The CIO, who initially contacted me, was really open about the team's current challenges and the state of their tech stack. He did mention that, given my background, I might be a bit junior for the position. The rest of the team seemed focused on their standard, routine questions.

It was a two-round interview process. The first was an on-campus thing with the CTO, which was pretty chill, with some brain teasers and good talk about the company. I thought it was a great place for new grads. Then I had an onsite interview that went from around 10 am to 3 pm, which included lunch. The first part of the onsite was with a team lead, and there were some coding questions about linked lists, graphs, and hashmaps – tough but doable. After that, I met with a Business Analyst for a design round where we had to figure out a customer solution based on a prompt. The interview got harder with the third round, focusing on OOP and requiring me to whiteboard two pretty tough coding questions. I managed to get through those first three parts. The fourth and last round, though, was a disaster. The interviewer was really rude and arrogant, hitting me with obscure edge case questions and then nitpicking my resume. It felt hostile, especially since it was about 4.5 hours in with no breaks. They kept asking these cynical questions about graphs and even why 2+2=4. It ended abruptly, and the promised lunch never happened. I was told I'd get an email about the outcome, but after chasing it, I still haven't heard anything.