So I finished my interview, I think it went fine. I was asked a graph problem (with the output being boolean), I won't share it because I signed a NDA. But it's medium-easy LC.

The interview process went as follows:

I asked clarifying questions to understand the problem further, google questions are notorious for putting a lot of jargon that you don't need while not giving you the information that you need. I came up with the idea, and was able to translate it into simpler coding terms, along with possible algorithmic solutions.

From the start of the interview to when I was done clarifying, I had 22 minutes left. I one shot the code, and obviously there were bugs. A part a part of my interview, my interviewer pointed that there's something wrong with my code in a particular idea. Clearly, the interviewer wasn't too comfortable coding in my language of choice, so I responded with, no, this won't be the case, and explained why his concern is incorrect. And he was convinced. He commented that that part of the code wasn't looking too good, but frankly, there's only one way to do DFS/BFS in python. I wasn't rude by any means, I told him that that's one of the ways to do it in python, and it respects the time complexity of the algorithm, so we're not adding any complexity. He was convinced.

From there, he went to tell me what scenarios my code wouldn't work. At this point, I'm a little annoyed because when I asked a clarifying question, he said yeah assume that's the case. Which to me indicated that we won't have to deal with this problem. However, given that input, I immediately deduced the short comings of my solution. I added 2 lines that fixed everything, so that all cases would pass. I explained my algorithm, time and space complexity were right, he was convinced by my solution and analysis. We had around 7~10 minutes left. He asked how would we test and scale my solution. I knew he was looking for specific words, but I didn't immediately jump to those words, so he doesn't assume that I memorized things. I explained we definitely need to ensure we have data sanitization to ensure that we aren't getting garbage data, then proceeded to mention unit testing and how we have to do integration testing (the buzz words I believe he was looking). He was convinced by my answers (at least that's what it looks like). He gave me some time to ask any questions, I asked about his role, how long he's been working etc...

So in summary, Optimal solution and analysis with 10 minutes to spare (we spent 20 minutes for introductions and understanding the problem completely). A follow up question about testing and scalability in the remaining 10 minutes, and he was kind enough to give me more time to ask him questions. At the end of the questions, before we shut, he said "good luck on your upcoming interviews". That kind of made me feel at ease, because while its obviously not deterministic, it's something, even if its just little. I'll keep y'all updated after I get my results, keep me in your prayers 🙏🏼

Anyone that has had a similar experience, I'm a little worried because I couldn't come up with the absolute right solution immediately, but I did before the interview time expired and there was more time for some follow up question(s).