o9 Solutions Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I had a Hackerrank test with 20 questions covering many topics. Then, I interviewed with the WebApi team. The first round was with a Senior Software Engineer (SSE). We discussed C#, advanced topics, SQL, and DSA. Some questions were tricky but interesting. The interviewer was mostly respectful, and by the end, it felt like we were already colleagues, discussing C# and microservices knowledge. The second round was a really bad experience. The interviewer, a Software Architect from the same team, joined late with his camera off. He reviewed my GitHub and asked me to find 5 mistakes in my personal project code. He claimed to find only 3, then pointed out just one mistake that wasn't even in production code. He then lectured me on registering HttpClientFactory, stating I hadn't implemented it, even though it was in my code. He couldn't analyze my DDD-based code properly, showing a negative attitude and superiority complex. It seemed he wasn't assessing my skills but trying to belittle me. He wasted a lot of time on this. He asked how to test service code without an interface, which took 15 minutes and was pointless as it's a bad practice. Then, he asked me to recite a LINQ statement in Visual Studio. He also took 15 minutes to ask a basic question about distributed transactions. When I answered correctly, he spoke rudely and belittled me, even remarking I'd never develop a fault-tolerant system (my answer about 2-phase commit was correct). With 3 minutes left, he asked if I had questions, but I was exhausted and declined. A key takeaway is to end interviews immediately if the interviewer is disrespectful. The first interviewer asked tough but respectful questions, even though I had relevant experience.

It started with an aptitude test during campus placements. They checked my knowledge on basic Supply Chain Management. After that, they asked logic coding questions and then behavioral questions. There were two technical rounds. No HR Round. It took a long time to get the offer letter officially after confirmation, like 3-4 months for me to receive it.

The recruiter hit me up on LinkedIn. After a quick chat, we set up some interviews. It was all online, with 3 tech interviews and 2 HR ones. Some good points were the challenging tech questions and the company's strong stock value and outlook. But, the product was confusing, and the interviewers couldn't explain why they were using outdated tech. The recruiter's communication could have been better. I declined because the offer wasn't as good as I hoped, and I prefer a flat hierarchy, which this company didn't seem to have.