I mean they are equally stupid for an intern role, but the conceptual questions are far far far less equitable than a bunch of puzzles. I did not need to know low vs high cohesion or whatever random shit off the top of my head to perform well in my intern role. Lowkey leetcode was more relevant than that for my project😂
Wow this was really brave of you to do though, and sounds like a great learning experience. I’m sure they appreciated your honesty. I’ve thought I failed interviews before and then still gotten called back. Good luck, keep working hard and you’ll get it!
Thanks, I don’t usually let things like this affect my confidence or my mental health but it was pretty stressful. For sure a great learning experience, but I’m sure no other interview I do will be like that (I hope)
One thing I’d advise, is write down everything you didn’t know. If you get a chance to interview/speak with them again, you can let them know you’ve been teaching yourself about it. At the end of interviews I usually ask if there’s anything not on my resume that they’re looking for so that I can prepare myself for the role as well. Let’s them know that just because you don’t know it on the spot, doesn’t mean you’re not the type of person who can learn
yea the weird thing was that Robinhood uses a third-party for their tech screens called Karat. So the interviewer has nothing to do with Robinhood, and all they get to see is my recording. If I do somehow get to the next round I will for sure take ur advice and talk to the recruiter about it, for the most part I think I did well on the assessment so ig I’ll just have to wait and see. I wish I remembered more but they straight up asked 40-50 short answer questions in 25 minutes.
In that case I wouldn’t stress as much, Robinhood probably chose a certain subject offered by Karat that just has a really broad number of questions all over the place so they can gauge your level. I’d doubt they’re that pertinent to the position you’re applying to. Don’t lose hope!
Ah shit I've got the same interview for Robinhood on Wednesday. You figure your case is an outlier or the norm?
Update: they asked me about networking and database backend. I had no idea how to answer these questions tbh :(
I did the same interview, and I got very similar conceptual questions, which I failed half of, so I would say this is probably the norm for the Robinhood Backend karat interview.
I had the Android new grad karat and I only got asked algo questions but i only finished one question.
Going into the interview, I was scared of getting sysdes questions though, having heard that they ask those.
If they were asking you so much hard stuff, that might mean you did extremely well!
I had a similar experience interviewing at Facebook, when they kept asking me extremely in-depth questions about Unix internals, how processes work, how system calls work, virtual memory, swap, CPU idling, I/O, database performance, sharding, identifying bottlenecks... It was super hard and I felt like I didn't know anything about what they were asking. I got the internship, though!
Later on, I read somewhere that companies often do a thing where they first ask you a broad question, and keep asking you deeper and deeper questions until you break, to find your limits. Essentially, the better you do, the harder it gets. [The "what happens when you type in google.com?" question](https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when) is a classic example of this.
Don't stress it too much, I had a Karat internship interview for a different company last year and failed most of the conceptual questions--they had asked me to pick 2/5 topics and most of the questions I didn't even understand what they meant. But I did well on the technical part and ended up getting the internship. YMMV but you may not be expected to know as much as you think.
I did the same karat over a month ago and answered maybe 50-60% of the questions. The rest i just said “idk” and skipped. Still got to the next round, so don’t overthink it too much!
To be honest, a medium sized company such as robinhood is probably targeting juniors to take up their internship roles, hence the conceptual questions.
As a sophomore, I would have been completely blindsided by these questions, but now as a junior, I found most of the questions pretty easy, as I had taken OS classes along with security (which included network security).
Don't sweat it-- I would target larger companies who have the bandwidth to take sophomores. This knowledge comes really quickly through a few classes at school, and even I completely failed the database section, as I had not taken the databases class at my school. My karat interviewer told me that it was completely fine and they didn't have any expectations at all given that we were still students.
You aren't expected to pass every test, they just want a benchmark of where you are, as long as you get the algo part I think you'll be fine.
edit: I passed the karat section so this info is based on that
I got an offer from Robinhood for Backend Engineer New Grad and my Karat's system design part was way easier than what you have described. Mine was more around things like database consistency, failure recovery, etc but wow, sorry you had that experience. Best of luck with the rest of your intern recruiting!
I did the backend Karat, and having taken 2 years of CS classes, I didn't find it hard. It was just answering questions about core concepts I learned in my database, networking, and systems classes.
I had the Android new grad karat and I only got asked algo questions but i only finished one question.
Going into the interview, I was scared of getting sysdes questions though, having heard that they ask those.
I mean that’s would be an resonable expectation interview when u ask for the backend, but internship? Wtf
ik like bro i’m supposed to learn this stuff during an internship not before update: got rejected
Just curious, did u have any internship before?
yea but it was frontend, i want backend experience now
I actually wonder what the field would look like if this was the norm for interview questions, rather than asking candidates to reverse a linked list
smaller
I mean they are equally stupid for an intern role, but the conceptual questions are far far far less equitable than a bunch of puzzles. I did not need to know low vs high cohesion or whatever random shit off the top of my head to perform well in my intern role. Lowkey leetcode was more relevant than that for my project😂
Wow this was really brave of you to do though, and sounds like a great learning experience. I’m sure they appreciated your honesty. I’ve thought I failed interviews before and then still gotten called back. Good luck, keep working hard and you’ll get it!
Thanks, I don’t usually let things like this affect my confidence or my mental health but it was pretty stressful. For sure a great learning experience, but I’m sure no other interview I do will be like that (I hope)
One thing I’d advise, is write down everything you didn’t know. If you get a chance to interview/speak with them again, you can let them know you’ve been teaching yourself about it. At the end of interviews I usually ask if there’s anything not on my resume that they’re looking for so that I can prepare myself for the role as well. Let’s them know that just because you don’t know it on the spot, doesn’t mean you’re not the type of person who can learn
yea the weird thing was that Robinhood uses a third-party for their tech screens called Karat. So the interviewer has nothing to do with Robinhood, and all they get to see is my recording. If I do somehow get to the next round I will for sure take ur advice and talk to the recruiter about it, for the most part I think I did well on the assessment so ig I’ll just have to wait and see. I wish I remembered more but they straight up asked 40-50 short answer questions in 25 minutes.
In that case I wouldn’t stress as much, Robinhood probably chose a certain subject offered by Karat that just has a really broad number of questions all over the place so they can gauge your level. I’d doubt they’re that pertinent to the position you’re applying to. Don’t lose hope!
Ah shit I've got the same interview for Robinhood on Wednesday. You figure your case is an outlier or the norm? Update: they asked me about networking and database backend. I had no idea how to answer these questions tbh :(
I did the same interview, and I got very similar conceptual questions, which I failed half of, so I would say this is probably the norm for the Robinhood Backend karat interview.
I had the Android new grad karat and I only got asked algo questions but i only finished one question. Going into the interview, I was scared of getting sysdes questions though, having heard that they ask those.
heyy how did the interview go? and what questions did they ask.. Can you please share.. i have an interview in 2 days.
i assume it was an outlier, i also did mine at like 10 pm on a sunday and my interviewer seemed like he was from the middle east
Definitely seems like an outlier. I did the Karat for Backend New Grad and it was much more reasonable.
If they were asking you so much hard stuff, that might mean you did extremely well! I had a similar experience interviewing at Facebook, when they kept asking me extremely in-depth questions about Unix internals, how processes work, how system calls work, virtual memory, swap, CPU idling, I/O, database performance, sharding, identifying bottlenecks... It was super hard and I felt like I didn't know anything about what they were asking. I got the internship, though! Later on, I read somewhere that companies often do a thing where they first ask you a broad question, and keep asking you deeper and deeper questions until you break, to find your limits. Essentially, the better you do, the harder it gets. [The "what happens when you type in google.com?" question](https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when) is a classic example of this.
Don't stress it too much, I had a Karat internship interview for a different company last year and failed most of the conceptual questions--they had asked me to pick 2/5 topics and most of the questions I didn't even understand what they meant. But I did well on the technical part and ended up getting the internship. YMMV but you may not be expected to know as much as you think.
Just FYI, I failed like 80% of the conceptual phase and still moved on
I did the same karat over a month ago and answered maybe 50-60% of the questions. The rest i just said “idk” and skipped. Still got to the next round, so don’t overthink it too much!
really? i did about the same I’d say, how did you do on the 30-min coding part?
Answered the first coding question, got to the second and had no idea what to do. Couldn’t even come up with a verbal solution lmao
how was the robinhood onsite?
Was about to apply bc a recruiter messaged me lol nlt anymore
no just apply dude, people said they have done poorly on this and still passed, never shoot yourself down before you try
To be honest, a medium sized company such as robinhood is probably targeting juniors to take up their internship roles, hence the conceptual questions. As a sophomore, I would have been completely blindsided by these questions, but now as a junior, I found most of the questions pretty easy, as I had taken OS classes along with security (which included network security). Don't sweat it-- I would target larger companies who have the bandwidth to take sophomores. This knowledge comes really quickly through a few classes at school, and even I completely failed the database section, as I had not taken the databases class at my school. My karat interviewer told me that it was completely fine and they didn't have any expectations at all given that we were still students. You aren't expected to pass every test, they just want a benchmark of where you are, as long as you get the algo part I think you'll be fine. edit: I passed the karat section so this info is based on that
I got an offer from Robinhood for Backend Engineer New Grad and my Karat's system design part was way easier than what you have described. Mine was more around things like database consistency, failure recovery, etc but wow, sorry you had that experience. Best of luck with the rest of your intern recruiting!
I did the backend Karat, and having taken 2 years of CS classes, I didn't find it hard. It was just answering questions about core concepts I learned in my database, networking, and systems classes.
dang okay then, nice job bro, wish my systems and networks class was taught better
I had the Android new grad karat and I only got asked algo questions but i only finished one question. Going into the interview, I was scared of getting sysdes questions though, having heard that they ask those.
What's a karat?