Whatnot Software Engineer interview experience

My first round was a system design interview, and I felt like I failed it afterward. The interactions with the interviewer were still positive, though—they seemed confident about the company, and the conversation itself stayed constructive.

The system design prompt was like designing a LeetCode-style feature. I had to confirm the requirements with the interviewer, then the focus shifted to how to safely run user-submitted code. That part caught me off guard because I wasn’t prepared for concerns around securely executing third-party code. We also touched on database choices and tradeoffs.

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