LinkedIn·Software Engineer·Technical Phone Screen
- Explain how MapReduce works.
“Covered the basics, map phase splits and transforms data, reduce phase aggregates it.”
Large Enterprises
Most of these LinkedIn write-ups come from Software Engineers (156), then Product Managers (66) and Data Scientists (37). The most reported rounds are the technical phone screen (169), the product sense round (62), the system design round (42) and the behavioral / leadership round (20).
316 interview notes · updated Oct 2026
“Covered the basics, map phase splits and transforms data, reduce phase aggregates it.”
“Classic product improvement format.”
“I've seen this one before so I wasn't totally lost, but I still fumbled the structure a bit.”
“The binary search angle is pretty clear once you think about it for a second, but the part that actually tripped me up was the overflow.”
“I started with requirements which felt right, but I spent too long on the functional side and the interviewer had to nudge me toward non-functionals.”
“This one pulled me in two directions pretty fast.”
“My first instinct was to just say yes and start listing reasons, which would've been a mess.”
“This is deceptively wide for a single question.”
“This one tripped me up a bit because it sounds easy but you can ramble forever if you're not careful.”
“Broad question but it's actually kind of a trap if you try to answer it generically.”