I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Airbnb (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2017
Interview
I was referred by a friend.
I was given a code challenge to work on, on HackerRank. I produced code that wasn't able to pass all the test cases. Afterwards I had a follow up call with an engineer where I discussed how I would have fixed my solution.
I moved on to a phone screen interview with an engineer. The interviewer was generally friendly and talkative so I was able to bounce my ideas off him. I wrote a working solution with test cases and he seemed satisfied.
Eventually I was scheduled for an onsite interview. I commuted to the city and walked to the office. The area outside the office wasn't to nice but once you were inside it was beautiful. It was the nicest office I had ever seen, even better than Twitter imho. It was incredibly quirky. The recruiter took me around for a short tour and then I was thrown into my first two interviews.
The first two interviews were "cross functional" interviews but they were basically cultural interviews. They ask you pretty broad behavioral questions that aren't necessarily related to work at all. Each interviewer asked about 10-15 questions. I came prepared for most of the questions and didn't feel stumped by any of them.
After the cultural interviews was a deep dive interview which was pretty fun. I also prepared for this interview so I felt I did really well. I went into great detail about the largest project I attacked at work. The interviewer would ask clarifier questions and by the end of the interview we were both pretty fired up.
After this interview I had lunch with my friend who referred me. I was ensured this was NOT an interview lol.
After lunch I was thrown into two coding interviews. The first interviewer was extremely intense, noting my mistakes before I was even able to notice them. They asked me a hard question that I practiced from leetcode and glassdoor. I was able to explain my thought process and get a working solution with a few minutes to spare. This felt like a pair programming exercise.
The next interviewer came into the room and seemed extremely flustered. I legit thought he was having an anxiety attack. It made me feel uncomfortable. He could barely tell me what the question and then once he was finished he sat down and was furiously working on his laptop. This interview was a stark contract to the previous interview and was just weird. I was able to get 2/3 of the solution complete with running code so I didn't feel too bad about it.
Finally, I had an whiteboarding/system design interview with a senior engineer. I was asked to design an internationalization system. This interview was pretty fun and mostly consisted of clarifying requirements and evaluating the tradeoffs of different approaches. By the end of this interview the interviewer seemed quite excited about the discussion.
Finally, I met with my recruiter again and was escorted out. Overall, the day was extremely tiring given that I already had trouble sleeping and then had to go through a 5 hour onslaught of interviews. I left feeling incredibly optimistic and excited about Airbnb as a company. Throughout the entire process my recruiter was incredibly helpful and everything was extremely clear.
Two days later I was rejected without feedback. Upon asking for any feedback I was ignored. I'm not entirely convinced Airbnb is honestly hiring for a particular position. It feels like they might just be constantly interviewing and willing to hire any absolutely fantastical candidates... Similar to other reviews on glassdoor about AIrbnb I was left with a sour feeling in my mouth. What could I have possibly done better?
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,