TikTok interview notes, page 18 of 28

“Gave the usual answer about scale and impact.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at TikTok, Recruiter / HR Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“My first instinct was prefix sums, which got me somewhere but I fumbled explaining the partition logic cleanly.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at TikTok, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“I had a decent story ready but I fumbled the middle part where I should've explained how I actually resolved the trade-offs.” The rest of the author's notes on Data Scientist interview at TikTok, Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“I went with divide and conquer.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at TikTok, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“The naive approach jumps to mind immediately and that's the problem.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at TikTok, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“This was basically a dissertation prompt disguised as an interview question.” The rest of the author's notes on Data Scientist interview at TikTok, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“Two-pointer approach, pretty standard.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at TikTok, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“I started with a hashmap and felt pretty good about it until they asked about getRandom.” The rest of the author's notes on Software Engineer interview at TikTok, Onsite - Coding / Algorithms round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“I started with logistic regression as a baseline because it's fast and interpretable, then moved into tree-based models like gradient boosting.” The rest of the author's notes on Data Scientist interview at TikTok, Technical Phone Screen round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.

“I started with DAU, then tried to segment users by how active they are since a casual lurker and a creator have wildly different follow graphs.” The rest of the author's notes on Product Manager interview at TikTok, Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy round, covers how they worked through the question, what the panel pushed back on, and what they would do differently.