I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in May 2016
Interview
The interview process was smooth enough. It was odd that I had three different recruiters talking to me at different times. I never knew who I would be speaking with at any given time. Even when I arrived, I was told to ask for a specific person. Instead of that person, a different recruiter came to meet me. However, everything was scheduled well and I was never left in limbo.
The interview itself was fairly straight forward. The first interview was a discussion of software engineering and projects I've worked on in the past. The interviewer was nice and dug into things enough to find out if I really knew what I was talking about.
The bad interview I had ended up ruining the entire process for me. I was interviewing for an app development position, but never actually talked to the app developers who were interviewing me. One person left me in a room by myself with vague instructions to create a search feature. After a little less than an hour and a half, I was told that time was up. By then I had created the search feature using the libraries they use and written in a way to show that I can create production-level code in an interview. It wasn't perfect, but given the time limit I did an exceptional job.
I never spoke to or saw the person who left me in the room. Instead I spoke with two other developers who asked me a bunch of very simple questions about my approach. They never indicated anything wrong with my code or asked questions about anything specific.
I was informed later that I did not get an offer because I did not complete the assigned task. From my perspective, I not only completed it, but I used it as an example of my knowledge of their stack and how easily I can work with it. Apparently my RecyclerView item didn't contain two views that they wanted to see. Those views were mentioned once, but never asked about when going over my approach to the task.
I am not claiming to be the best app developer, but I do know what I am doing. If anyone had asked about those views, I would have very simply added them in an efficient way. My mistake was thinking that they were looking for a well-made search feature and not simple layout design.
Pretty standard engineering interview. Recruiter call, technical interview, system design. They also had a code review interview that I had never seen before. I thought it was a little trickier than average, but not horrible. Sucks that if you don't move to the next round you can't reapply for a year.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about the tech stack you've worked with before
I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Apr 2026
Interview
Submitted my application and the next day i received the coding assessment I did not speak to anyone it was all done online, Im still waiting to hear back on my results
I applied online. I interviewed at Airbnb in Mar 2026
Interview
Had hiring manager call but got reject after the interview. The interview was around my past experience in the current company. Talked about how I influence roadmap, handle escalations and architect team’s initiatives,
3
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