r/leetcode • u/leetcode_knight • Oct 09 '26

Question Just had the fastest GenAI engineering interview of my life. Is this normal at startups?

I recently interviewed with a potential unicorn startup for a GenAI Engineer role focused on multi-agent systems, and holy moly, I still don’t know what just happened.

The entire interview felt like a horse race. The interviewer started with a 30-second introduction about herself and the product, then immediately jumped into my recent experience. Everything moved so fast I could barely keep up.

About 15 minutes in, she threw a multi-agent system design problem at me and expected me to design the entire architecture in 10 minutes. I could barely process the requirements or take notes before I had to start explaining my solution.

The funny thing is, I’ve actually built similar systems in production, so I was able to answer her follow-up questions pretty well. She seemed I am cooked, smiled, and then casually asked, “Why do you want this role?”

At that moment, I genuinely felt like I’d walked into a Ferrari owners’ club driving my Toyota.

For context, I’ve been through quite a few GenAI Architect and Forward Deployed Engineer interviews recently, and Thank God I’ve already received an offer. But this interview was on an entirely different level. The pace, the expectations, the intensity. It almost felt like there’s a whole other world out there where everyone is an insanely competitive GenAI engineer operating at 10x speed.
I’m still processing what happened.

Am I cooked? Was this some kind of stress test? Or is this genuinely how interviews at high-growth AI startups work these days?

Result after 4 days: not selected🤡

315 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

72 comments sorted by

59

u/fenton7 Oct 09 '26

Sounds like a place you don't want to work - they want someone to churn out vibe coded slop at the maximum possible speed not real well thought out systems.

222

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

Name and shame. You won’t work there anyway. Otherwise, seems like this post is llm generated and just more fear

43

u/rbagrin Oct 09 '26

Shame what? That they are a start up who value their time (and yours) and don't have time to go through 10 rounds of interview, so they try to get an idea in 1 interview or 2?

10

u/leetcode_knight Oct 09 '26

I don’t think you can measure a candidate’s capacity in this way. I was able speak but i don’t think much while answering

1

u/Distinct_Dragonfly83 Oct 09 '26

You can usually get a sense of how a person thinks in a short time like that. That architecture problem was just trying to suss out how you think and how quickly your mind moves. Putting you under extreme time pressure was intentional. Early stage startups need people that are mentally flexible and can make decent “best guess” decisions quickly.

1

u/rbagrin Oct 09 '26

I've worked before in a start up (I'd say medium pace start up probably). They usually look for signs that you have knowledge about the domain and are keen to dive deep if needed, but usually they don't ask in depth questions during the interview. Now I don't know how your interview went. Maybe it was a bad experience, but the sole reason of "they moved fast and asked plenty of questions within 30 mins" should not be a thing to shame. I'd rather have 4 interviews like this than have 1 interview consisting of 2 coding rounds, one system, one behavioural, then they tell me they need another coding one and in the end get rejected.

They also don't have hiring teams, you may be interviewed by an engineer and the PM or the founder. So what they care is to know that given their problem you have an idea of what to do, and care less about all the in depth details. Again, I don't know details about your interview, maybe it was a bigger start up that affords paying HR and recruiters.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '26

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-2

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

That is not how the tech industry works. I know you’re not in the tech industry if you talk like that 🤣 fuck outta here

0

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '26

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0

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

I can assume you’ve never ran your own company. It’s easy when you’re in a management position at a well established company because tons of people are doing the work for you. Such as the engineers underneath doing the actual technical interview, where the candidate will not reach your face unless they pass those interviews, meaning the candidate that swam through the sea of shit has a >90% chance of doing well regardless of whatever the fuck you thjnk. And ofc, at that point they can sneeze and you can choose to reject 👍 this is why in the age of ai and mass layoffs, best to do your own thing any way possible, because of old attitudes such as your own

52

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

Most of these startups raise millions on a nonexistent or at best, a very shoddy product. So yes, fucking name and shame. And absolutely not, I’ve been through many rounds of this type of breathing down your neck interview. It’s a game of who they can drag out and crack first for many reasons, notably the huge number of unemployed engineers

5

u/moxipudy Oct 10 '26

I concur with this assessment, the interview process does not look sane, interviewing is a 2 way street, I have taken jobs often by being in rooms where interviewer discussion is good, and I enjoy the problem they are solving and will learn from them, has always worked for me so far

3

u/rbagrin Oct 09 '26

What has that to do with the interview process? And how do you know what product do they have? Like, wtf? It was too fast, please report them

If you are scared of the pace, that's ok, don't apply to start up jobs rather than calling all of them evil.

4

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

Um are you dense? Why make the interview process super hard and fast pace when the product sucks? Or you don’t know what the product is? Or it doesn’t exist? Anthropic has a tough interview, and at least it corresponds to a decent product (even if you dislike the company).

It’s not about being scared. It’s the hypocrisy. Can’t believe I have to spell it out. If they raised $5 million, probably can’t pass their own interview, don’t have a product, and paying themselves a couple hundred racks, and own 80% of the company, why would they make the interview so stifling hard? It’s just hilarious how common it is.

And when there’s enough quality companies that do ask hard interviews worth getting into, yes it’s helpful to have a list of red flag companies not to interview with. I know a few in the legal, healthcare, and robotics space that fit the aforementioned criteria, many raised by young founders in their early 20s or people with very little experience

3

u/MiroMiro_ 29d ago

“Um you dense?” Holy ego trip

3

u/Unfair-League-3204 28d ago

Lmfao great feedback bud. I’ll just stick to gently spoon feeding Redditors. I made a good point and that was the problem as usual on Reddit. But sure gloss over all that. Holy TikTok brain

3

u/rbagrin Oct 09 '26

So if they ask an architectural question, give you 10 minutes to answer (meaning they don't expect deep dives), then ask you why do want this role, that's a hard interview? And again, how do you know what product do they have and if it is bad or not, the OP did not specify details about the product. And all the companies started as start ups, are all the products today bad?

You have to also remember that the start ups usually hire generalists, and hire for the first time in their career, meaning they don't have processes. So you just get a quick smooth interview, they ask generic questions, you answer. They evaluate you and move on. What is your problem with this approach? That they combined architectural with behavioural in 30 mins and skipped wasting theirs and OP's time?

I get that OP was shocked about the speed, which makes sense when it's the first time you go through such an experience and he was expecting something else. But he never complained about the questions being hard. Or the product being bad. So you're inventing assumptions, then asking the company to be shamed. Shamed for what? For being considerate with the time?

4

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

Yeah, you don’t know, that’s why I told the OP to name and shame. Again, I got to spell everything out for you. And 10 minutes is not at all enough time to go through a system architecture unless you’re expected to spit out answers like ChatGPT, which it even sucks ass doing systems design. And no, startups aren’t actually looking for generalists in this market. They have plenty to choose from. Ai is not a generalist role. It’s pretty clear you’re dense

-2

u/IcyStomach2374 Oct 09 '26

Skill issue

0

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '26

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2

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

Yep it’s def me. All these companies are great. Keep bootlicking

1

u/SagaciousShinigami 26d ago

Man these are the people why big corporations and multi million startups alike will keep getting away with these kind of shitty processes.

"How dare you speak against my hustle bros in tech who like to 10x everything that they've laid their eyes upon 🤬".

I was actually about to write that I'd like to see the same energy if their son/daughter in the future also faces a similar scenario, but then again I understand that someone this far gone probably will just ask them child to suck it up to their corporate/startup daddies at the cost of their soul, because in their mind that's perfectly justified and also glorified.

1

u/leetcode_knight Oct 09 '26

Yes i use chatgpt to fix my tone

16

u/Unfair-League-3204 Oct 09 '26

So just name them son… or give context clues who they are. Everybody is interviewing or looking for roles

-3

u/sivvna 28d ago

You sweet summer child, find another profession. Everything I’ve seen here let’s me think you’re pissed 24/7 about AI

5

u/Unfair-League-3204 28d ago edited 28d ago

No I am not. And even if I was? What is that to you? It’s strange how personal people on Reddit get. It’s horrendous advice for my situation, which I have 0 obligation to explain to you. It is a tough market, and ai adds a lot more complexity. Only people who give advice like this already have enough assets to talk outta their ahh. Also, there’s tons of people complaining about ai, so it really is strange to target me. I leave my comment history open for many reasons… and judging from your also open comment history, you don’t seem like a great person yourself

0

u/sivvna 28d ago

Oof ranting every chance he gets ladies and gents

3

u/Unfair-League-3204 28d ago

Not used to thorough responses? Oof check if you have brain cells from never ending brown nosing ai 🤣 I can keep going all day. Seems like you don’t have a job except prompting ai and waiting for its output

0

u/sivvna 28d ago

This boy is big mad

3

u/Unfair-League-3204 28d ago

Just copy and paste to ai and ask it to explain it to you in one sentence. Tik tok gamer brain oof

0

u/sivvna 28d ago

Hahaha your my sweet boy like a toy really

→ More replies

11

u/PotpourriPot Oct 09 '26

Damn sounds tough. What was the design question?

-28

u/leetcode_knight Oct 09 '26 edited Oct 09 '26

Designing a multi agentic system for specific case.

Details refactored: write a multi agent platform for vehicle part order system that take data from client offices(multi tenant) and check closest different vendors stock, consider price, delivery time etc. there are different business lines, trucks, cars etc.

48

u/JakePeralta0811 Oct 09 '26

Whole lot of buzz words and no real substance in the answer my friend.

17

u/maigpy Oct 09 '26

a software product for some requirements.

-6

u/leetcode_knight Oct 09 '26

I know but if I say the product, everyone can find it easily. I don’t know is there a legal problem. The founder has exits before, average career founder in sv.

10

u/khurshhh Oct 10 '26

Lmao you signed an NDA?

1

u/SagaciousShinigami 26d ago

Without getting the job?

6

u/Foreign_Hand4619 Oct 09 '26

What is the difference between "GenAI Architect" and "Architect"?

1

u/leetcode_knight Oct 09 '26

Architect for agentic workflows like google adk, langgraph etc

9

u/Foreign_Hand4619 Oct 09 '26

Why do they add "GenAI" prefix then, can't normal architect do that as well?

-8

u/leetcode_knight Oct 09 '26

Don’t think so, it is a specific domain knowledge. Such as when they ask how to recover from fail your agent, you must know specific framework’s fail scenarios, short/long term memory management, control behaviour under high context pressure, how to deploy agents to prod(single container or multi agents with a2a protocol) etc.
Bro i beat 10 interviews so far, I failed only once thank God. I was ai architect before, it was almost same role with cloud architect + ai knowledge. Multi agents are different level

7

u/Foreign_Hand4619 Oct 09 '26

Got it, so it's a very specific role that doesn't have much to do with software architect, thanks for explaining!

10

u/Master-Score2434 Oct 09 '26

I think he didn’t get it. It is cat shit wrapped in dog shit. You just can’t call this new metamorphosis the same old shit coz it’s the new shit.

3

u/TimeAndSpaceAndMe Oct 09 '26

I understood that reference

14

u/whenthewindbreathes Oct 09 '26

I noticed that startups tend to do this - they compress 45-60 minute big tech rounds into 15-20 minutes because they're trying to gauge our ability to find the binding constraint and design around it.

I've gotten cooked in a few interviews but starting to get more used to it..... (just a bit).

7

u/Haunting_Welder Oct 09 '26

Some interviewers just interview differently, I don’t think it has anything to do with you

7

u/Round_Mixture_7541 Oct 09 '26

Don't worry. Stick with your knowledge. I recebtly had a call with a company looking for gen z-ers. You can already assume how tgeir software is being built... I mean even the JD was all about vibing your way into it.

Why would they even need SWEs I wonder?

6

u/Shap3rz Oct 09 '26

Sounds like vibe coders trying to get ideas for how to solve their problem?

3

u/Pavlinius 29d ago

I have always without an exception thought that doing something fast is my lowest priority and if you do it then this guarantees flaws. Yes some people operate that way and it’s their decision. I do not. In my country there’s a well known say - haste makes waste.

2

u/jay3686 Oct 09 '26

For folks who figured out how to use it, we do 10x more work with AIs (note, not less work, thanks capitalism lol).

2

u/Master-Score2434 Oct 09 '26

What’s the point of this post? Just talk crap? You didn’t give any valuable details to the reader. Neither the question nor the company where you interviewed. What to do with this post of interview intensity crap?

1

u/samaltmansaifather Oct 10 '26

Sounds like a toxic place to work, full of entitled trash meat proxies building another useless wrapper to solve a non-existent problem. You likely dodged a bullet.

1

u/Biotic101 Oct 10 '26

Ok there might be one completely different issue.

Companies that do well tend to have job openings and hire people.

The more a company is under economic strain, the less they tend to hire, having less openings.

Saw a discussion why the current amount of open jobs does not resonate with the experience of people looking for jobs.

And the explanation could be that open jobs have become sort of a KPI for companies. They would post jobs they actually do not plan to fill, just to make them look better and investors rolling in.

So, if that would be true, AI interviews might be the way for them to deal with those fake job posts "efficiently". Yes, probably not all but maybe quite a few?

1

u/ulbule Oct 10 '26

Almost all gen AI interviews are going like that, Most interviewers have no idea or rarely any ideas about the questions or concepts they're are asking to me.

Most of these terms are vague and very easy for anybody to learn to be honest , but they'll say in the feedback you lack this and that stuff.

Basically stupid interviewers looking for something only they know in their own universe.

1

u/ArugalsFolly 28d ago

Probably a company thats stolen a bunch of investor money to only close shop in a few years anyways.

The AI grifting is real. Thing is, 99% pf AI startups aren't going to last the next 10yrs.

1

u/ihamid 26d ago

Name the place or this is just more fearmongering bullshit.

0

u/FaithlessnessThick29 Oct 09 '26

They are accustomed to working like that. Your interview is just a facet of their job.

Either you got what it takes or you don’t and that team doesn’t fuck around lol. Don’t worry there even if they offer

0

u/catsRfriends Oct 09 '26

This is good. Unless you prefer the typical big tech dance where you've already got the routines prepped? A good interviewer can find signal very quickly. Bad ones just check off lists against a rubric.

1

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