It was one of the worst experiences. There was an initial HR screening call and the recruiter seemed really nice at the start. It was followed by a technical phone interview on which the feedback was I did really well and the team will like to move ahead. After a very long delay of almost 2 weeks, I was then set up for a call with an SRE manager which I never really understood why that was a case since I come from a Backend role but still took the call and it went well. The call wasn't meant for evaluation and it was mostly me understanding the teams and organization, I wasn't asked anything except my background.
From here everything went downhill after I asked the recruiter how to proceed on the onsite and that I would like them to consider me for backend roles and not SRE roles. After good 2-3 weeks of continuously chasing the recruiter calling him multiple times I was told that he is working with his manager to set up the onsite with the right team very soon.
The very next day received an auto rejection email wow. They would show as if it's one of the best upcoming startups but totally unprofessional from inside. I am not sad about the rejection but sad that there was no justification in the email and the technical screening wasn't easy as well to clear. I was excited about the company and delayed other phone rounds to wrap up their onsite first but seems like the company has no coordination and credibility.
Recruiter then phone screen - phone screen was “product based” and easy LC difficulty, interviewer was very kind, helpful and attentive. Passed the round but didn’t move forward due to accepting a different offer
I applied online. I interviewed at Airtable (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2026
Interview
The phone screen was very conversational and good follow ups were asked. It was specific to an AirTable feature used in the spreadsheet operations. I would say it is not LeetCode style and the recruiter had already told me this would be close to a real world problem.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Airtable
Interview
Had a recruiter screen which went well, I really liked the recruiter here! Super nice and on top of it, and I was excited for the opportunity to interview here. However, I didn't appreciate my interviewer at all. My interviewer was very unhelpful and did a terrible job at explaining the overview of what needed to be implemented. At one point, he even laughed/scoffed at something I was saying, and I just felt very disrespected, and he gave me an air of arrogance. If this is the type of engineer Airtable hires, then I'm certainly not a good fit for this company. In addition, he didn't give me enough time to think, and when I was proposing an idea he would try to give me the answer before I even had an adequate amount of time to think. Like hold on! I'm getting to it. I truly don't think I was given a fair chance because of the interviewer I was given but it's okay, there are other opportunities out there. Just super unfortunate because I really liked my recruiter and I thought this culture would be reflected during the interview process!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Recruiter asked me about my background and projects