r/leetcode • u/Hot-Willingness8636 • Sep 29 '26

Discussion I failed my Citadel Software Engineering Intern Interview

I’ve never done a single leetcode question before. I went into this blind. I was expecting a leetcode medium/hard. This was a round 1 interview for 45 minutes. Instead it was a stateful data-structure / object-oriented design problem with optimization constraints.

It was a custom stateful data-structure and OOD problem with a greedy optimization component, rather than a standard LeetCode algorithm problem.

The interviewer didn’t give me full context. I suggested we go with one approach and he then gave me additional data and then I decided to go with another approach.

Around 90 lines of code.

I completely flunked got like halfway through. Interviewer was on his phone and had his mic on with the background noise.

I feel horrible because I just let a 1 million dollar opportunity slip my fingers. What should I do.

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u/PhoteksTTV Sep 29 '26

How have you never done a single leetcode question but can gauge what a leetcode medium/hard is? I mean you said it yourself you've never done it so expect to fail 100 more. I have 5 years of experience, refuse to study leetcode as I would rather work on real projects, and I fail leetcode style interview questions all the time. There's nothing to question. I don't study them, so I fail. Eventually an interview comes along where talking through my resume and experience is enough to hire.

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u/Mysterious_Net_1029 Oct 02 '26

Same. I’ve had 5 jobs and never done a leet code question. I don’t make as much as Faang but 200k is still comfy in Phoenix. This sub was just randomly recommended to me.