I applied online. I interviewed at LinkedIn (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2017
Interview
Started with a technical phone screen with two problems. One was a LeetCode Easy, and one was a version of implement an LRU cache. Pretty easy, and the interviewers were nice and seemed smart. I moved on to the onsite.
There are five interviews at the onsite level. 2 coding, one with a hiring manager, one system design, one project overview. Coding problems were significantly harder in person than on phone screen. I don't know why they would do that. What drove me crazy is that I had a working answer (similar to his but not exactly what he wanted) and the interviewer wouldn't allow me to code it. He kept trying to point me to his solution. I thought the point of a good engineer is that we can come up with solutions on our own? I think that kind of interview process speaks poorly to their culture.
The second coding interviewer wasn't paying attention. I described my algorithm, started coding, and he started correcting my syntax. However, he was correcting it to a different language. And then he said 'well we don't use that here...' Okay, I thought the point was that the interview is language agnostic? This happened in the phone screen as well (asked me to code in Java). After I explained no, I am not using Java, he stopped paying attention at all. He just browsed something on his computer (scrolling and scrolling, and occasional clicks.. kind of like how you would use reddit..). I said I was done. He ignored me. I said it louder, he finally looked up and then took forever to catch up. He seemed very skeptical of my solution. I looked up the problem later, and my answer was the top rated on LeetCode so shrug. I had never seen that problem before.
I was very turned off by people insisting LinkedIn is a 'financially stable startup'. LinkedIn IPO'd years and years ago, and they were bought out over a year ago. One of the guys who explained he had only worked at startups said he didn't realize how political and redtapy big companies are. I'm guessing there's an internal push to claim they are a startup?
Only one interviewer was a real jerk (the guy who didn't pay attention), but I don't think I would interview there again. There is a lot of ego.
I applied online. I interviewed at LinkedIn (Sunnyvale, CA)
Interview
Initial phone screen followed by a 6 hours onsite interview.
Questions were similar to what other glassdoor reviewers posted. Practice the problems in leetcode and glassdoor.
Their interviews are terribly long. It lasts up to 6 hours without a break. So make sure you are well fed and hydrated. Being fresh through the last round is more important.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at LinkedIn (Mountain View, CA) in Jul 2017
Interview
Interview process is pretty standard with a phone round and onsite schedule for 5 interviews + lunch.
1. To start with phone round was average difficulty, questions from leetcode majorly.
The only issue here, the interviewer trying to push his way of doing things on me, even though my way was better int time complexity and space complexity both. (Question: NestedList sum and basically reverse of that). I had to explain him in deep why is my code better and much more efficient, which as a Interviewer he should have caught much before me explaining him.
2.1 Onsite Hiring Manager Interview: Pretty straight forward and a lot of things we talked about including last projects and his last project and in the end he gave me a question he solved in 5 years to see my approach, overall really helpful interview.
2.2 Technical Communication: Again pretty straight forward interview take one of your best and one that you can clearly explain project and start talking about it, and answer any question they have.
2.3 Lunch: Pretty smooth. (Their cafeteria is much better than google and facebook quality wise!!)
2.4 Code Round1: Here all the negative started, one of the interviewer was a bit junior and the other senior and junior decided to lead the interview with one of the medium level question from Leetcode (Expression Operator). The problems: a] She didn't know how to solve the question she basically opened the LeetCode on her computer to keep it checked with my answer b] They don't want you to use your approach as they don't understand (they were super unprepared like Super!) c] Two interviewers not listening to my answers that I am giving to other one instead concentrating on their own questions instead of constructive its more like (You are Wrong!) kind of interview. d] They asked me to optimize the code which was optimized till the core (Basically expecting 4^n solution set but time complexity less than 4^n). They didn't understand this and kept pulling me till the end of the hour when one of them finally understood he was wrong and said that "This is most optimized one"; however the second lady didn't hear this and made a point that I didn't optimize it!!!! :/ (Stupid alert!!)
2.5 Design Interview: The lady was really helpful and wanted to understand my approach (Seemed pretty rear in Linkedin looking at other interview experiences)
2.6 Coding round 2: Both the engineers were super cool, one of hard level question I believe(Find k most closest nodes in BST, basically becomes hard when you improve time complexity) and the other one was finding square root of a number can be any number even decimals.
I got the response from my recruiter in 3 days saying they rejected me, because "I Couldn't optimize the code in my first coding round" Duh!!! I sent my recruiter email with all the details and how unprepared the interviewers were and she replied saying nothing can be done now as the decision is already taken however they will make sure it doesn't happen again!! (Looking at the other interviews it doesn't look like they do anything with the feedback)
In Summary: Great recruiter, very prompt and smooth process, but the actual interviews they tend to depend more on your luck (I don't like that!!). If the company improves the interviewers chances of getting right talent is a ton, and overall company really had healthy feeling. But again unprepared, lack of interest from interviewers killed my dream to join linkedin.