Relax. Look, I've spent time at a small startups in the tech sector, then at a tech giant, then in finance (where I went on to found a small shop of my own). I

Relax. Look, I've spent time at a small startups in the tech sector, then at a tech giant, then in finance (where I went on to found a small shop of my own). I can safely say that it's pretty random and all you can do is increase your odds by studying. At the end of the day, it's pretty well known that at any big tech company a second pass through the interview process would easily cut out a lot of the people there. Could be a bad day, a question you don't remember, etc. I personally now only ask the homework type of questions. Making sure to give the person plenty of time to do it. Works really well but obviously someone won't like it (though I've yet to run into the mythical person turned off by having to do a simple coding project that HN keeps talking about...)