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Twitter coding interview / online assessment, format and difficulty in 2026

qa_quinn · 5 replies

Did the Twitter coding rounds last month, interviewing on the down-low from my current job. Here's what actually happened.

No online assessment first. They went straight to recruiter screen, then technical phone screen, then onsite. I've seen some threads mention a HackerRank OA but I didn't get one. Might be role-specific or tenure-dependent, not sure.

The phone screen (45 min): One coding question. Binary search on a rotated sorted array. Classic. Got it done in about 25 minutes, spent the rest talking through edge cases and a follow-up about handling duplicates. The interviewer was chill, remote, camera optional.

Onsite coding rounds (2 rounds, 45 min each): Both were what I'd call medium-plus. Not hard, but medium with a twist that needed actual thought.

Round 1: Graph traversal. Finding number of connected components. Seemed easy until they added a constraint about weighted edges and asked for the minimum spanning tree of a specific subset. Doable but not trivial under pressure.

Round 2: String manipulation + sliding window. The sliding window setup was obvious, the tricky part was the edge case where the window wraps (circular string). I almost missed it.

Both interviewers asked me to think aloud the entire time. One of them literally said "I care more about how you think than whether you get the answer." I think they meant it. I stumbled on Round 2 but recovered by catching the edge case myself and explaining the fix.

Difficulty level: I'd say it's a solid leetcode medium grind. No dynamic programming deep-dives, no DP on trees. Graph + BFS/DFS fundamentals, sliding window, some array manipulation. If you can do 80-100 mediums you're in decent shape.

Language: Python or Java seemed fine. I used Python. They didn't care.

One practical note: the coding environment is a shared editor with no autocomplete. Practice in a plain text editor or on a whiteboard, not in your IDE. That blank-screen feeling is real.

5 replies

firsttime_mgr

Thank you for this. I've been grinding leetcode hard for the past month because I assumed big tech = hard questions everywhere. Maybe I should be doing more mediums instead of burning out on hards.

sec_sasha

The shared editor with no autocomplete thing is real and people underestimate how much it throws you off. I code so much with language servers now that writing raw Python in a blank editor feels like doing surgery in oven mitts.

quietquit_quincy

Exactly this. I fumbled a method name I know cold because my hands expected autocomplete to catch it. Spent 15 seconds second-guessing myself. Practice typing out actual complete code with no assist. It's a different skill.

pivot_pat

Do they let you use any language or are there restrictions? I'm more comfortable in JavaScript than Python and trying to decide if I should switch before interviewing at places like this.

quietquit_quincy

JavaScript should be fine. I'd check with your recruiter but I don't think they restrict to specific languages. Standard algorithms in JS is totally viable, just be comfortable with prototype quirks under pressure.