Tesla | Full Stack Engineer (Autopilot) - New Grad | Palo Alto, CA | Oct [Reject]

I am a new grad. I applied online and interviewed on-site at Tesla's Palo Alto office in early October .

Phone Screen 1 (45 min)

• Intersection of Two Linked Lists - Leetcode
• Python-specific JSON parsing question

Phone Screen 2 (45 min)

• What do you know about Tesla
• Go over your previous work experience
• Explained that the Autopilot team was very busy, asked if I was able to handle the workload

Passed both screening rounds and was given the choice to do the onsite on Zoom or in-person. I chose the latter and they flew me out to Palo Alto.

Onsite Technical - Frontend (45 min)

• Implement a basic React component, style it with CSS

Behavioural (30 min)

• Culture fit questions like "Why did you choose Tesla" again
• The usual behavioural questions

Technical - Backend (45 min)

• Extremely Python-specific coding problem dealing with dictionaries.

Technical - Algo/DS (45 min)

• Easy-medium question with bucket sort + two pointer, similar to:
  • Group Anagrams - Leetcode
  • Valid Palindrome - Leetcode

Behavioural (15 min)

• Self reflection on how the interview went
• Confirmed if I wanted to still work there given the busy work culture

Result I heard back in two days that I was rejected. Reasons were that my CSS and Python depth was not up to standard, and that they needed someone to hit the ground running day one. This came to a surprise as I thought I performed well and still completed each round with time to spare.

Thoughts Throughout the process, each interviewer told me about how busy the workplace was, and how we may have to work weekends. I feel like I may have dodged a bullet. At least I got a free vacation out of it.