Techie says interviews in India are lot more tougher than US even though the salary offered is half

An Indian techie’s claim that job interviews in India are considerably tougher than those in the US has sparked a discussion on social media, with the anonymous candidate arguing that Indian hiring processes often place greater emphasis on difficult coding questions than on practical experience and system design.

The techie said US interviews tend to focus on problem-solving, system design, professional experience and behavioural skills, while Indian candidates can face several rounds of high-pressure coding assessments. “Interviews in India are way more difficult than they are in the US,” the person wrote, adding, “For half the salary.”

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US interviews focus on experience and system design, techie claims

According to the Reddit post, coding questions in US interviews are generally in the easy-to-medium range and are used primarily as a “gating mechanism”. The candidate said greater weight is given to actual work experience, system design and behavioural assessments.

The techie claimed that even at staff level, candidates in India can be expected to solve two hard LeetCode problems within 45 minutes, with difficult LeetCode questions appearing throughout the process.

By comparison, the person said staff-level candidates in the US can clear interviews with strong system design experience and mostly easy-to-medium questions from NeetCode 150. The candidate also claimed that interviewers in the US often do not require candidates to execute the code and that companies have increasingly shifted towards more practical problems.

The Reddit user said such interview performance could lead to a job paying about $400,000 in the US, while claiming that Indian candidates face substantially more coding rounds for lower compensation.

Users debate coding rounds and applicant volumes

The techie claimed Indian candidates can face three coding rounds, each involving two hard LeetCode-style problems, compared with just one system design round. The person urged Indian interviewers to focus more on professional experience and system design.

One Reddit user disagreed, saying even mediocre talent can land decent US jobs and that clearing FAANG interviews in India is harder. Another commenter described a staff engineer interview at a travel company, saying the first four rounds with interviewers from Thailand were friendly and conversational, while the fifth, conducted by an Indian interviewer, was allegedly cut short after 43 minutes. The user said similar experiences had occurred at other companies.

A third user attributed coding-heavy interviews partly to the high number of applicants in India, saying hard LeetCode problems offer companies a quick and inexpensive screening tool, despite being a poor measure of staff-level work.

Senior AI engineer questions transformer coding tests

Another Reddit user, who said they had returned to India after clearing a lead AI engineer role at GE Vernova in the US, said Indian companies repeatedly asked them to write multi-head transformer code for senior AI roles. The commenter questioned the relevance of such exercises and said interviewers often followed up with at least seven questions to test their answers.

The user also claimed first-round interviews were frequently handled by employees with one or two years of experience and lasted about an hour.

User criticises Indian interview culture

The commenter rejected the argument that applicant numbers fully explain the process, claiming HR sends a similar number of candidates to interview panels in India and the US. For two vacancies, the user said, this could mean 15 candidates in the first round, 10 in the second and four in the third before the final offer.

The commenter also described some Indian interviews as “toxic and disgusting”, alleging that interviewers sometimes keep their cameras off. The user said they would adopt a more candidate-friendly approach if they interview people at their own company in the future.