ByteDance Software Engineer interview experience

The first round lasted about 45 minutes and started with deep discussion of my resume projects, especially the AI-related system design questions they wanted clarified. The last 15 minutes turned into coding, and I was asked to solve the classic Number of Islands problem. There weren’t really follow-ups after that, likely because of time.

I received a rejection email about eight working days later. Even though the format was clear and reasonable, I remember walking out feeling like I’d only gotten a limited chance to fully express how I think—once the coding ended, the conversation basically