Instacart Software Engineer interview experience

It felt built around speed more than understanding, with limited communication and not much room to think through nuances. After that, I got a “move forward to onsite” signal—then things shifted after the fact. A week later, I was told an Instacart interviewer had reviewed my system design from the recorded format and decided it wasn’t up to the mark.

The problem was that the system design part had barely been tested during the Karat session—more like a very short glance than a meaningful evaluation. I left the whole experience feeling insulted by how little time they seemed to spend before