# Interview Reference

General patterns and lessons from running interview loops through this pipeline. Replace or augment with your own notes as you go.

## Common phone-screen patterns

### "Walk me through your resume"

Usually the first question. Tight, 2 to 4 minutes per role. Start with the current job, don't reverse-chronicle unless asked.

### "Why are you looking?"

Honest specificity beats a scripted answer. "I wanted to move closer to platform work and my current role keeps landing me in backend feature work" reads better than "I'm passionate about new challenges."

### "What do you know about us?"

Do the reading, but don't regurgitate marketing copy. One genuine question about the tech blog or a public decision is worth more than three bullet points from the About page.

## Technical screen patterns

### Systems design

Variants seen across recent screens:
- Design a rate limiter
- Design a URL shortener with analytics
- Design a task scheduler
- Design a notifications service

Bring a real example from your experience to any abstract question. Interviewers remember specifics.

### Coding

Most screens at the senior level are less algorithm-heavy than earlier in career. Expect:
- A "read this code, find the bug" variant
- A modest data transformation with edge cases
- An open-ended "build this small thing" with follow-ups

## Lessons from past loops (generic)

- **Don't hide gaps.** Saying "I haven't done much with X, but here's how I'd approach it" reads better than faking fluency.
- **Ask clarifying questions early.** Interviewers score "clarifies scope" as a positive signal even when they don't announce the rubric.
- **Slow down on whiteboard design.** The first 5 minutes of silence to think is rewarded, not punished.
- **Treat behavioral questions seriously.** Have 3 to 5 stories with crisp metrics ready. "Tell me about a time you disagreed" shouldn't send you fishing.

## Red flags to watch for

- No detail on team composition when you ask
- Vague answers about on-call expectations
- "We're still figuring out our engineering culture"
- Missing or stale public engineering writing for a team that claims to value open source / technical excellence

## Things that have surprised me

Keep this section honest. When a question or a format catches you off-guard, write it down and review before the next loop.
