Booking.com Software Engineer interview experience

I first went into a coding interview, and then later I had a system design interview. After the technical parts, I ended with a culture-fit discussion.

Across the interviews, the difficulty centered on knowing data structures and algorithms and also being comfortable with system architecture. What surprised me was how much the room felt shaped by the interviewers’ style: I ran into one coding session where the interviewers were mostly silent and didn’t step in with hints until it was too late, which made the whole thing feel more intense. That contrast showed up in other parts of the process