It was as follows:
(1) When I asked how I could be of service at LinkedIn, the interviewer could not answer the question, stating they were not sure whether I would be filling an entry-level role or a senior role.
(2) It was difficult to understand the interviewer’s accent.
(3) I was given the same question I was asked ten years ago: How do you test whether two binary trees are mirror images, for which the entry-level coder's answer would be something hideous like:
==============================================
bool isMirror(Node* tree1, Node* tree2)
{
bool ret_val = false;
if(tree1 != null && tree2 != null)
{
ret_val = (tree1->m_data == tree2->m_data) &&
isMirror(tree1->m_lhs, tree2->m_rhs) && isMirror(tree1->m_rhs, tree2->m_lhs);
}
return (tree1 == null && tree2 == null) ? true : tret_val;
}
==============================================
(4) The interviewer did not want an iterative solution that avoided stack overflows and made better use of CPU cache, much less a PhD with physics and maths skills.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you apply quantum mechanics to data mining? Sadly, the interviewer did not seem to know the answer to a very basic question that even the most mediocre physics undergraduate could answer in under five minutes.
Started with a nice recruiter messaging me through LinkedIn, and a nice on the phone technical interview, which was too short in time to get all the info for both sides.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at LinkedIn (Mountain View, CA) in Nov 2015
Interview
The onsite interview process is pretty dismal when compared to other SV companies of LinkedIn's stature. My first interviewer had a strong accent, but I could indeed understand him. Another interviewer had no mastery of the English language whatsoever and could not adequately communicate what he was asking. My algorithms interview was "interesting" to say the least - the (junior) interviewer refused to accept any answer different from what he already had in mind regardless of big-O time/space complexity of my solution. This threw me off and I bombed it. I felt like I did OK-to-good in all interviews except for the algorithms interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Sorry - I signed an agreement. That said, I was asked coding questions that are listed verbatim on glassdoor.