First is a typical call with the recruiter to find alignment between potential candidates and the role. Second is a code exercise through a tool similar to coderpad. Before the exercise starts, me and the interviewer discussed and agreed on my approach, and also agreed that we wouldn't be looking for anything performant/elegant. I chose to solve the problem using Java, which made the solution pretty verbose and I admit, not pretty at all. I was able to walk through the logic and explain as I moved along, and, excluding compilation errors, got it right on first try. After completing the exercise, I took the initiative to discuss ways in which the code could be improved and how I would've treated the problem in the real world. We also discussed the current state of tech at Affirm, and the current pain points they're going through, which align with what I've been through both in my current and past experiences. Recruiter got back to me next day and let me know that they had decided not to move forward. With little to no feedback, the reason for the decision wasn't very clear seeing as I successfully solved the code exercise during the interview. I suspect that the interviewer expected a more elegant solution based on comments he made about how Python has utilities that make it a lot easier to complete the exercise. He also suggested finding a more performant approach as I got closer to completing the exercise, even though we had agreed in the beginning that we would not be going for an optimized solution. As it turns out the interviewer is junior so not surprised as juniors usually make a big deal out of little things - like we all do when we're junior :)