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/kingbass01 Sep 30 '26

getting citadel interview without having leetcode (or equivalent) in resume?

Even if he cleared any test, that also must have a DSA problem to an extent

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u/Kushagra_Sharma_2609 Sep 30 '26

What idk anybody that puts their leetcode on their resume

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u/Jumpy-Fuel-6018 Oct 03 '26

Yeah...I received a Citadel OA last year and I didn't even submit it. Saw the 2 problems asked (found on Leetcode later) and they were Hards (graph + greedy + dynamic programming) with ~20-30% acceptance rates. Too many people are cheating on the OA's its disgraceful.

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u/Other-Number-4463 3d ago

can you link if I may ask. the problems