FDE interview reports on Reddit and Blind: how to read them without being misled

By FDE Interview Prep, a SourceStrongAI company

In this post14 sections

1. Where the FDE threads are, and what they describe
2. The thread title is not the commenter’s claim
3. Before the loop is not after the loop
4. Second-hand accounts from prep-site accounts
5. One thread, quoted in many places
6. Old reports and processes that have changed
7. Figures that travel from site to site
8. A reader’s checklist for any interview thread
9. What Reddit and Blind are good for
10. How to ask your own question on Reddit or Blind
11. Read company by company
12. Questions people ask
13. Keep reading
14. More from the blog

You found a Reddit thread titled “Palantir FDSE Technical Interview” (FDSE: forward deployed software engineer), and one reply lays out a whole loop, round by round, ending in “Offer recieved” [sic]. Read it again. One commenter wrote all of it, and never said which company they interviewed with, or for which role. ^[1]Source 1Palantir FDSE Technical Interview (comment by u/MShakeed)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit This post is the Reddit and Blind companion to the FDE interview guide, which covers the rounds themselves.

The short answer: Reddit and Blind hold some of the most detailed forward deployed engineer interview accounts you will find, and some of the easiest to misread. Read every post as one dated account from one person. Before a thread changes your prep, check six things: who named the company and role, whether the round had already happened, who is actually writing, when it was posted, whether you have already read the same report somewhere else, and whether any figure links to data.

Where the FDE threads are, and what they describe

Here is where the FDE threads we found live:

Every check below comes with a real example that fails it. The checks are our method, not a rule any employer or forum publishes.

The thread title is not the commenter’s claim

A thread title is written by whoever started the thread. A reply below it is written by someone else, who may have interviewed somewhere else, for another role, years later.

Here is that opening example in full. In a thread on r/csMajors titled “Palantir FDSE Technical Interview”, a commenter who did not name the company or the role wrote, in May 2026, that their process was an HR screen, a 1-hour short coding task with a short decomp, a “super day” of three 1-hour interviews, and a hiring-manager round, then “Offer recieved”. ^[1]Source 1Palantir FDSE Technical Interview (comment by u/MShakeed)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit Useful, but not, strictly, a Palantir report.

The same thing happens with round types. In a thread on r/csMajors titled “Palantir FDSE Intern Learning Interview”, a commenter who did not name the company or role described, in August 2026, a learning round that began with the interviewer teaching a technical concept, then showed object-oriented code for querying an imaginary database, and asked for a series of small query functions that they never had to run. ^[2]Source 2Palantir FDSE Intern Learning Interview (comment by u/Illustrious_Beat4472)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit

Sometimes the poster names half of it. Replying in an r/csMajors thread about Palantir FDSE interviews, in October 2022, one poster wrote that they “did onsite for FDSE Intern last week”, and never named the company in their comment. ^[10]Source 10Palantir Forward Deployed Software Engineer Interview (comment by u/kevbothepro)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit They named the role, not the employer.

The fix: read the comment with the title covered. What does the poster, in their own words, say about where they interviewed? If the answer is “nothing”, label it “the thread says Palantir; the poster did not”.

That label does not make the comment worthless. The second comment clearly describes a round type you can practice anywhere: learn code you did not write, then extend it. To practice it, work learn a new library fast, and read the Palantir learning interview for the round in detail.

Before the loop is not after the loop

A post in an interview thread can be a question, not a report. “I have X coming up, what should I expect?” tells you what someone expected, which is not what happened.

Two posters on r/csMajors wrote about a Palantir learning interview they had not taken yet: one, in July 2026, for a Palantir FDE Commercial Delta role, wrote that it was their first round, 30-45 minutes. ^{[3, 4]}Source 3Palantir FDE Commercial Delta Interview (post by u/Popular_Elephant_349)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 4Palantir FDSE Intern Learning Interview (post by u/Realistic-Major9132)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit A second poster, a Palantir FDSE intern candidate, wrote in August 2026 that the learning interview came straight after their recruiter screen, and that they “saw this was out of order”, measured against the order they expected: the recruiter screen, then the technical LeetCode interview. ^{[3, 4]}Source 3Palantir FDE Commercial Delta Interview (post by u/Popular_Elephant_349)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 4Palantir FDSE Intern Learning Interview (post by u/Realistic-Major9132)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit They asked, “Is this normal now?”

“Out of order” is the poster’s impression of other people’s loops, formed before their own round. It is not a count, and not a report of any round.

Blind has the same pattern. Two Blind posters described Google interview formats before interviewing: in June 2026, one wrote that the recruiter told them it would be one coding round and one system design round, and in July 2026, another, with an upcoming interview for a US-based “Google cloud consulting and FDE for AI role”, described a 2-hour round split between scenario-based system design and Python coding. ^{[6, 7]}Source 6Can anyone share insights into Google FDE interviews?PublisherBlind (teamblind.com)Source typecandidate report on BlindSource 7I have interview coming up with Google. It is for Google cloud consulting and FDE for AI rolePublisherBlind (teamblind.com)Source typecandidate report on Blind Neither had taken the interview yet. What you have is one recruiter’s description, relayed, and one candidate’s expectation.

The fix: find the verb tense. “I had”, “they asked me”, “I got” describe a round. “I have”, “it will be”, “the recruiter said” describe an expectation.

An expectation is still useful: it hands you a precise question for your own recruiter. Try this, after your first call:

“I’ve seen people describe a learning round early in the process. Is that part of the loop for this role, and roughly where does it fall?”

Second-hand accounts from prep-site accounts

A polished “interview experience” post on Reddit may not have been written by the candidate.

In July 2026 and again in September 2026, one Reddit account that promotes an interview-prep site posted polished “interview experiences” for an Anthropic senior FDE onsite, a Google senior FDE phone screen and a Palantir FDE intern assessment. ^{[9, 11, 12]}Source 9[Anthropic] [Jun 2026] [Forward Deployed Engineer/FDE] Interview Experience: Culture Fit Was Baked Into Every Technical RoundPublisherReddit r/OfferEngineering (Chill Interview account)Source typeinterview prep siteSource 11Google Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) Interview Experience : The Coding Was Easy, but the Repo Migration Follow-Up Got WeirdPublisherReddit r/OfferEngineering (Chill Interview account)Source typeinterview prep siteSource 12Palantir Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) Intern Online Assessment - 3 Coding ProblemsPublisherReddit r/OfferEngineering (Chill Interview account)Source typeinterview prep site The account was not the candidate in any of them.

These posts read well, and that is the risk: a clean headline with a company, a month and a role looks first-hand. It is a relay, and you cannot ask a relay a follow-up question.

The fix: check the account, not just the post. Our rules of thumb:

• One account posting experiences at many different companies is a publisher, not a candidate.
• A brand, a link or a product in the profile or the post means you are reading marketing.
• “A candidate told us” or “a reader shared” means second-hand, however detailed.
• No replies from the poster answering specific follow-ups means you cannot test any detail.

Label these “a prep site’s account relays”, never “a candidate reported”.

One thread, quoted in many places

A good comment gets copied into roundups, prep guides and “what candidates say” lists, so a stack of pages can rest on one person.

You can meet the same comment twice without noticing. In May 2026, one commenter wrote a Reddit reply about a 45-minute “coding +“ round on HackerRank CodePair, and it reached us twice: once through a Reddit archive and once from Reddit itself. ^{[13, 14]}Source 13Palantir FDSE Technical Interview (comment by u/shinji_dontdotoomuch)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 14Comment on Palantir FDSE Technical Interview threadPublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit Same commenter, same words.

Two summaries of one thread can also sound like two sources. In December 2024, one poster on Blind wrote about an upcoming Palantir FDSE onsite with learning, decomp and coding parts, and a respondent reported a LeetCode medium tree-type problem. ^[8]Source 8Palantir FDSE Onsite (Blind)PublisherBlindSource typecandidate report on Blind Read strictly, that reply narrows: a commenter wrote it without naming the company or the role, and said their advice applied only to intern and new-grad interviews. ^[8]Source 8Palantir FDSE Onsite (Blind)PublisherBlindSource typecandidate report on Blind However it is summarized, it is one respondent.

Roundups do the same with figures. One dev.to post that repeats a round figure was first published by a prep site, and credits other prep sites for the loop it describes. ^{[15, 16, 17]}Source 15Forward Deployed Engineer Interview Questions: A 2026 Prep GuidePublisherPerspective AISource typeinterview prep siteSource 16Forward Deployed Engineer interview questions (2026): every round, with real examplesPublisherDEV CommunitySource typeinterview prep siteSource 17Cracking the Forward Deployed AI Engineer InterviewPublisherAI Engineering Insider (Substack)Source typeinterview prep site The section on figures below follows that chain.

The fix: count posters, not pages. When a roundup says “candidates report”, click through to the original posts and count the distinct usernames. If the roundup gives no links, you have zero checkable reports, not several.

Old reports and processes that have changed

Search results do not sort by date, so a report from years ago can sit right beside one from last month.

In December 2016, one candidate wrote a Glassdoor review (we read it through a web archive) that listed them as accepting a Palantir Forward Deployed Software Engineer offer in New York and called the role an internship. ^[18]Source 18Palantir Technologies Forward Deployed Software Engineer Interview Questions (archived)PublisherGlassdoor (archived by the Wayback Machine)Source typecandidate’s personal write-up The reviewer, a single candidate, wrote that the onsite had two technical interviews and one decomposition in the morning, a “Palantir 101” presentation, and a lunch with an engineer that “turned into another decomposition”. ^[18]Source 18Palantir Technologies Forward Deployed Software Engineer Interview Questions (archived)PublisherGlassdoor (archived by the Wayback Machine)Source typecandidate’s personal write-up

Older still, a Hacker News poster wrote in June 2013 that they had just interviewed with Palantir for a “Forward Deployed SE, Government” internship, and were told the word “Government” referred to one of the two products they would work on: Gotham, which they were told used to be called “Government”. ^[19]Source 19Hacker News comment by alexsb92 on 'Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link'PublisherHacker NewsSource typecandidate comment on Hacker News Palantir now posts a role titled “Forward Deployed Software Engineer - US Government”, where the words read as a customer sector. ^[20]Source 20Forward Deployed Software Engineer - US Government (Washington, D.C.) - Palantir on LeverPublisherPalantir Technologies (Lever)Source typecompany job posting In that poster’s account, the same word once named a product. Old reports can use today’s words with yesterday’s meanings.

Employers also say their loops vary. Palantir says the number and format of interviews you go through are personalized to your skillset and the type of role. ^[21]Source 21Palantir Careers | Getting HiredPublisherPalantirSource typecompany hiring page Its 2020 blog post on interviewing acknowledges that candidates report contradictory experiences, with some calling the process brief and others finding it longer than expected. ^[22]Source 22Interviewing at Palantir: Advice from PalantiriansPublisherPalantir BlogSource typecompany blog

The fix: date the interview, not the post, and use old reports for round types only. Two posters, one on Glassdoor in 2016 and one on Reddit in 2026, both described a decomposition round. ^{[1, 18]}Source 1Palantir FDSE Technical Interview (comment by u/MShakeed)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 18Palantir Technologies Forward Deployed Software Engineer Interview Questions (archived)PublisherGlassdoor (archived by the Wayback Machine)Source typecandidate’s personal write-up That shows the round type has come up for years. It tells you nothing about the order or length of your loop.

Figures that travel from site to site

Sooner or later a comment quotes a pass rate for a round, or its share of the decision, with no link to any data. Ask where it came from.

In June and July 2026, prep sites and blog posts repeated the same pair of figures for the FDE case round. ^{[15, 16, 17]}Source 15Forward Deployed Engineer Interview Questions: A 2026 Prep GuidePublisherPerspective AISource typeinterview prep siteSource 16Forward Deployed Engineer interview questions (2026): every round, with real examplesPublisherDEV CommunitySource typeinterview prep siteSource 17Cracking the Forward Deployed AI Engineer InterviewPublisherAI Engineering Insider (Substack)Source typeinterview prep site Perspective AI gave no source, a dev.to post credited Exponent and DataInterview, and a Substack credited Perspective AI. ^{[15, 16, 17]}Source 15Forward Deployed Engineer Interview Questions: A 2026 Prep GuidePublisherPerspective AISource typeinterview prep siteSource 16Forward Deployed Engineer interview questions (2026): every round, with real examplesPublisherDEV CommunitySource typeinterview prep siteSource 17Cracking the Forward Deployed AI Engineer InterviewPublisherAI Engineering Insider (Substack)Source typeinterview prep site The prep site guide that the dev.to post credits, from Aced (formerly Exponent), calls the round “the single biggest filter in the FDE process”, and gives no pass rate and no weight. ^[23]Source 23Forward Deployed Engineer Interview: The Definitive 2026 Guide (FDE)PublisherAced (formerly Exponent)Source typeinterview prep site

The dev.to post, first published by a prep site, puts its credit on an earlier sentence with no figure in it, and the Exponent guide it links to contains neither figure. ^[16]Source 16Forward Deployed Engineer interview questions (2026): every round, with real examplesPublisherDEV CommunitySource typeinterview prep site So no link in the chain leads to data. No employer publishes a pass rate for any FDE round. What no one publishes traces the whole chain and gives you a three-step check for any figure.

The fix: a number in a thread needs a link to its data. If it has none, it goes in your “unknown” column.

A reader’s checklist for any interview thread

Run this on any post.

Then label the post in one line. Here is the opening comment, run through the checklist:

That gives you this label: one commenter on r/csMajors described, in May 2026, a completed loop, did not name the company or role, and posted under a thread title that says Palantir FDSE. ^[1]Source 1Palantir FDSE Technical Interview (comment by u/MShakeed)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit That label is honest, and it still tells you what to practice.

The evidence map is the free lesson this checklist comes from. It adds a second step: sort every labeled post into published, reported or unknown for your target company.

What Reddit and Blind are good for

Read this way, the forums are worth your time for three things. What they cannot give you is a pass rate, the typical loop, or how often anything happens; no thread can, however many upvotes it has.

Round types to practice

Reports describe decomposition, learning, practical coding and hiring-manager rounds, in different mixes. Practice each type, not a sequence:

• One poster, the FDSE intern from earlier, wrote, in October 2022, that their decomp asked them to design a feature given some information about the data. ^[10]Source 10Palantir Forward Deployed Software Engineer Interview (comment by u/kevbothepro)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit Work build a feature from fitness-app event data, then learn the approach in the open-ended round and the method on one page.
• For a practical coding round, one commenter described breaking down a real-world tool and then implementing a related function, and mentioned OOP ^[13]Source 13Palantir FDSE Technical Interview (comment by u/shinji_dontdotoomuch)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit: work the OOP inventory system against a timer, and talk through your choices as you go.
• For a learning round, which one commenter described as learning a concept and unfamiliar code, then adding small functions to it ^[2]Source 2Palantir FDSE Intern Learning Interview (comment by u/Illustrious_Beat4472)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on Reddit, work learn a new library fast and narrate what you are learning as you learn it.

Questions for your recruiter

Every expectation post and relay is a question you can ask the one person who knows your loop. Turn “a thread said X” into “Is X part of the loop for this role?”

Feedback worth hearing

One poster wrote on r/cscareerquestions, in June 2026, that, with one of their three engineering years spent as an FDE and while looking mostly in the FDE space, they had reached four final rounds and heard the same feedback each time: a great communicator, but technical skills not what the companies wanted. ^[5]Source 5Good communicator, but technical skills not up to par; pivot options? (post by u/calculusbitch99)PublisherReddit r/cscareerquestionsSource typecandidate report on Reddit They did not name the companies, and thought some of it was a domain mismatch. It is one person’s reading, but it raises a real question: is your engineering side as strong as your customer side?

How to ask your own question on Reddit or Blind

If you post, you will get better answers by asking for what the checklist needs:

“Interviewing for [company]’s [exact title], [level], next month. If you’ve done this loop, could you say which month you interviewed, the role, and which rounds you actually took?”

Replies that answer all three are worth reading; “I haven’t interviewed yet, but” is an expectation.

Read company by company

For two companies, we have already done this sorting: Palantir FDSE interview experiences lines up Palantir’s published outline against dated reports, and the Google FDE loop does the same for Google.

Take the threads you just read, label each one with the checklist, and put it on the evidence map for your target. Then practice the open-ended customer round in the free AI practice case, where an AI customer answers back; it only needs a free sign-in. In the curriculum, the evidence map is free, and the modules after it take the round types one at a time: decomposition, client simulation, enterprise system design and practical coding.

Questions people ask

Where have candidates posted FDE interview experiences on Reddit?

On r/csMajors, posters described Palantir FDSE loops and learning rounds, and some wrote before their round. On r/cscareerquestions, one poster wrote about final-round feedback while looking mostly at FDE roles. On Blind, posters wrote about Google FDE formats and Palantir FDSE onsites.^{[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]}Source 1Palantir FDSE Technical Interview (comment by u/MShakeed)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 2Palantir FDSE Intern Learning Interview (comment by u/Illustrious_Beat4472)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 3Palantir FDE Commercial Delta Interview (post by u/Popular_Elephant_349)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 4Palantir FDSE Intern Learning Interview (post by u/Realistic-Major9132)PublisherReddit r/csMajorsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 5Good communicator, but technical skills not up to par; pivot options? (post by u/calculusbitch99)PublisherReddit r/cscareerquestionsSource typecandidate report on RedditSource 6Can anyone share insights into Google FDE interviews?PublisherBlind (teamblind.com)Source typecandidate report on BlindSource 7I have interview coming up with Google. It is for Google cloud consulting and FDE for AI rolePublisherBlind (teamblind.com)Source typecandidate report on BlindSource 8Palantir FDSE Onsite (Blind)PublisherBlindSource typecandidate report on Blind

Are Reddit FDE interview reports reliable?

Treat each one as a single dated account of one person’s experience. Check whether the poster named the company and role themselves, whether they finished the round and when they posted. Palantir’s own blog acknowledges that candidates report contradictory experiences of its process.^[22]Source 22Interviewing at Palantir: Advice from PalantiriansPublisherPalantir BlogSource typecompany blog

Why do reports about the same company’s FDE interview disagree?

Processes change and differ by role. Palantir, for example, says the number and format of interviews a candidate goes through are personalized to the candidate’s skillset and the type of role.^[21]Source 21Palantir Careers | Getting HiredPublisherPalantirSource typecompany hiring page

Should I trust an interview report that a prep site’s account posts?

Read it as second-hand. In July 2026, posts by a Reddit account promoting an interview-prep site relayed an Anthropic onsite and a Google phone screen, and the account was not the candidate in either.^{[9, 11]}Source 9[Anthropic] [Jun 2026] [Forward Deployed Engineer/FDE] Interview Experience: Culture Fit Was Baked Into Every Technical RoundPublisherReddit r/OfferEngineering (Chill Interview account)Source typeinterview prep siteSource 11Google Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) Interview Experience : The Coding Was Easy, but the Repo Migration Follow-Up Got WeirdPublisherReddit r/OfferEngineering (Chill Interview account)Source typeinterview prep site

Keep reading

Guides

• The forward deployed engineer interview, round by round

Lessons

• The evidence map: what employers publish, what candidates report, how to read both
• What FDE coding rounds test, by the evidence
• The FDE decomposition interview: the method on one page

Questions

• Here is a table of events from a fitness app. Pick one feature to build from it and scope it to something you could ship in two weeks.
• Here is the documentation for a library you have never used. Use it to implement a small feature in the time we have.
• Model a small inventory system with classes in about a page of code. Then add a new requirement I give you.

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