got rejected after the onsite last month. not a great feeling but i want to write this while it's fresh because i made some choices i'd absolutely change.
The rounds I had: two coding rounds, one system design, one JEDI (behavioral). E5 SWE target.
Coding: i think i passed these. moved through both problems okay, talked through tradeoffs, got working solutions with time for follow-ups. the hard-medium pair was manageable.
System design: this is where i think i lost it. the prompt was designing a notification delivery system at scale. i went deep on the database schema and storage layer early. spent probably 20 minutes there. by the time i got to the actual delivery queue, fanout logic, and failure handling, we were running out of time. the interviewer was subtly trying to redirect me toward rate limiting and push vs pull delivery tradeoffs and i kept steamrolling back to schema.
what i should have done: sketch the end-to-end in 5 minutes, then ask the interviewer what to go deeper on. that's what meta interviewers actually want. they're checking whether you can see the whole picture before you zoom in.
JEDI (behavioral): i thought this went well but now i wonder. i used the same project story twice (different angles but same underlying story). probably should have spread across different experiences. meta JEDI rounds want to see range. "tell me about a time you had conflict with a coworker" and "tell me about a time you pushed back on a direction" should be different stories.
What i'd change: System design: breadth-first, then go deep where the interviewer points you JEDI: prep 6+ distinct experience stories, not 3 or 4 Ask the recruiter during prep which round types are in my specific panel so i know what to weight
going to take 6 months before re-applying. i think i can clear this loop, just need to prepare differently.