Coinbase Staff-Level Software Engineer Onsite Interview Experience

The OA interview experience is here: https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-1145841-1-1.html The VO interview was with the FinHub team under the platform, a total of 4 rounds, spread over 2 days. Bot

The OA interview experience is here: https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-1145841-1-1.html The VO interview was with the FinHub team under the platform, a total of 4 rounds, spread over 2 days. Both coding and design questions appeared in the interview experience. The following content requires a score higher than 100. You can already view it. Round 1, Tech Execution, Vietnamese guy: This round was basically coding. The question was from this thread: https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-1026049-1-1.html. This question doesn't seem to be frequently asked, but it seems to appear quite often for senior level and above. The first question was a simple knapsack problem, which I solved immediately. The follow-up was to add an optional parent to the transaction, thus forming a DAG. Before the knapsack problem, this directed graph needed to be processed. There were only 2 levels, and I had to write test cases and run them successfully. I

passed the first question on the first try. I debugged the second question for a while because there was a lot of code and the syntax was a bit complex. I

passed with 5 minutes left. The second round, Foundation, with a Chinese interviewer (HM): This round was purely behavioral questions (BQ). It involved self-introduction, describing a challenge project, and discussing time-critical decisions. They asked about each of my previous jobs, and why I changed jobs before completing two years. They also asked about scaling my projects, communicating with people from different backgrounds, and writing weekly reports. I nodded in satisfaction throughout, thinking the conversation went well. The third round, System Design, with a Chinese interviewer: The question was familiar: designing https://www.coinbase.com/explore, with data from the exchange service. The requirement was to display all cryptocurrencies, approximately 20,000, without designing a price database. I drew the entire API layer and the backend price aggravation, and discussed the history database and price cache. Finally, they asked if I had any extensions, so I drew the observability stack. With 10 minutes left, I thought I'd have time to ask questions, but they followed up with UI and front-end design. I nodded in satisfaction throughout, thinking the conversation went well. In the fourth round, Domain, the Indian guy said the staff level seemed different this round; it was a reverse system design, essentially a project deep dive. He asked me to choose a project, draw an architecture diagram on a whiteboard like a system design, and then carefully explain the data flow and the technical details of each component. Coding and design are both code signals, even project deep dives are codesignal. It seemed like there was a built-in whiteboard, and it appeared to be integrated with Excalidraw; aside from not being able to save or export, everything else seemed the same. A few days later, HR called to tell me I was

rejected, revealing that the system design was "a couple of misses." I was shocked. I hadn't raised any questions during the interview and had expressed satisfaction, and now they were giving me a bad review? Then they mentioned in the HM round that there was "more alignment for seniors," which left me speechless. I hadn't raised any questions during the interview and had expressed satisfaction. The key point is that you said there weren't enough staff, but there was no downgrade offer or team match, and I was immediately given a 6-month cooling-off period. Okay, you win. I'm blacklisting this team; I can't stand their backstabbing culture. I don't know if it's KPI interviews/green card ads or something like that, but it seems like there are a lot of these this year. I initially had a good impression of them; the HR was professional, and the coordinator arranged the virtual visitor quickly. However, it seems their engineering culture is problematic, so I need to learn more about it. Blind forums are full of bizarre stories, like "requiring at least two PRs a day" or "requiring VP approval for a two-week PTO appointment," etc.