interviewing for a Tesla software role (infra side) in about 3 weeks. want to get a better read on what's current, because the posts I can find online are from 2022-2023 and this company changes fast enough that I don't trust old data.
if you've been through a Tesla loop in the last year, can you drop: role/org, number of rounds, what they actually tested, and roughly how long the process took? anything about what distinguishes good answers from bad ones is especially useful.
not looking for vibes, looking for signal.
4 replies
backend_bekah
went through a backend platform loop about 5 months ago. 5 rounds total: recruiter screen, 2 coding (distributed systems and API design, fairly practical), 1 system design (scale a message queue, had opinions on tradeoffs), 1 behavioral. total elapsed time from app to offer was 23 days. they move when they want to move.
corp_refugee
infrastructure eng loop for the energy side (not automotive). 4 rounds. coding was leetcode medium-ish but with real-world framing. design was 'design the monitoring system for X'. behavioral was actually the most interesting: they asked what the hardest technical decision I'd made was, and when I tried to soften the answer they literally pushed back and said 'what actually went wrong.' respect that.
market_realist
the 'they pushed back on me softening it' detail is extremely useful, thank you. going to prep my STAR stories to include the actual failure mode, not just what i learned.
sre_sol
SRE loop for Autopilot infra, 6 months ago. 4 rounds. one was basically a live incident scenario: here's a symptom, walk us through how you diagnose it. that round felt most Tesla-specific. normal on-call chaos translated well.