Airbnb Interview Guide



Headquarters
San Francisco, CA
Founded
2007 by Brian Chesky,Joe Gebbia,Nathan Blechaczyk
Status
Startup (Funding : $4400M)
Employees
~ 12,736
Leadership
Brian Chesky (CEO)
Industry
Lodging
Revenue
~ $3B
Income
~ $93M
Overall Rating
(3.2)

Mission & Culture



Airbnb Mission Statement

“is to live in a world where one day you can feel like you're home anywhere & not in a home, but truly home, where you belong.”

Vision Statement-

Belong Anywhere-Airbnb is among the first company to come out strongly in making the world a global village. 

Global presence. To meet the needs of this second component in the Airbnb mission statement, the management of the company recognizes the importance of pushing similar principles in all regions it operates in.

Culture is a thousand things, a thousand times. It is living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall. We have the power, by living the values, to build the culture.“ 

Core Values

  • Champion the Mission
  • Be a Host
  • Embrace the Adventure
  • Be a Cereal Entrepreneur

Company



  • Hard Coding Problems.
  • Strong culture
  • Great space and physical environment,
  • Global, entrepreneurial, creative, mission-driven
  • More young and inexperience leadership managers
  • Average Work-life balance.
  • Free Food

Software Engg.

  • L3    (160k-240k)
  • L4    (270k-350k)
  • L5    ( 425k-500k)
  • L6    (550k-610k)

4 Levels (Managers, Directors, VPs, and CxOs)

Products

  • Luxury products by Airbnb Plus
  • Beyond By Airbnb
  • vacation homes,
  • Unique, B&B and Boutiques
  • Flipkey
  • Turnkey
  • HomeAway
  • Vrbo
  • Booking.com
  • Homestay
  • Unlimited vacation days, within reason.
  • Parental Leave Policy : 4-8 months.
  • Compensation can be taken in Cash or RSU or both.
  • Flexible working hours.
  • Health, vision, and dental insurance.
  • Employee stock purchase plan.
  • Free lunches.

Software Engineer



Process

  • An initial phone screen by the Recruiter. 
  • Difficult Hacker Rank Coding Challenge
  • Two phone or skype interview checking with the Hiring manager for technical knowledge.
  •  onsite interview.
    • Seven rounds of 45 minutes each comprising of technical and behavioral rounds.
  • Given a hashmap that maps a string name to a list of preferences, return a list of events that matches each person's preferences. If there are conflicts in order of preferences, return empty list.  
  • Pitch AirBNB Plus to this super host profile.  
  • array with strings of airports find the fastest way to the destination.
  • Create iterate from the list of the list  .
  • Given an array of float prices, round each price such that the total sum of the prices stays as close as possible to the previous sum but the prices in the array are converted to round numbers IE (36.46 4.54) will become (36, 5)  
  • Given a list of nodes and a list of directed connections each one of those nodes has to each other(not every node has a connection, and cycles may exist), find the minimal amount of entry points for a message to spread to every node.  
  • Data structures, and arrays manipulation
  • Graph with file path like structure  
  • Assume that Airbnb decided to enable search on user reviews. In order to make the search better, you were requested to tag specific words in the review.
  • A search team has given you a bunch of key-value pairs where the keys denote words that may or may not present in a review and the value corresponds to the search metadata. Your task is to prepend the metadata tag and highlight the specific review word in brackets. You should make sure the original case is maintained in the result string.
  • Implement an iterator for an array of arrays.  
  • Output list of strings representing a page of hostings given a list of CSV strings.
  • Implement an iterator class. 
  • Given a list of strings, return all pairs of strings that can make a palindrome. 
  • Given a list of n strings. Each string has length k. Return true if there're 2 strings that only differ by 1 character, otherwise false. You can assume that all strings contain only lowercase English letters [a-z].
  • Given a board that is a kingdom. The board is represented as an array of strings. Each string contains a number of tiles separated by a space. Each tile consists of a letter, and there can be 0-9 crowns. Your task is to calculate the total score. The score calculation is done by using the following formula:
    number of same tiles in an area * a number of crowns in that area. A board can be of any size no greater than 5x5.

  • Design a k-v store. 
  • Implement a Bank Account. 
  • Design an internationalization service
  • Why Airbnb?
  • Tell me about the last time you tried something new.
  • Tell me about your project you are most proud of?
  • If Airbnb wanted to open a new office, how would you determine how many meeting rooms to build into it? 
  • How did you handle a task where you had a deadline that you couldn’t meet?
  • Do you have any questions for me? 
  • Tell me about a time you had to give someone terrible news.
  • How do you determine whether something is a problem or just a symptom of a problem? 
  • How do you approach solving a problem? 
  • Tell me time when you failed?
  • Tell me time when you recommended something and it was not well received?
  • Tell me about your ideal Airbnb experience.
  • Tell me time when you have to make a pivot and choose a different approach or solution.
  • Tell me a time you had a conflict with your peer and how did you resolve it?
  • Tell me about the constructive feedback you have received?
  • Tell me a time you disagreed with your management?

Loading Please Wait...