Wayfair | Senior Software Engineer | Bangalore

Round 1: Screening Hackerrank [Passed]

• Two coding questions: One LeetCode Medium and one LeetCode Medium/Hard.
• Successfully passed all tests for the Medium question and achieved approximately 60-70% test case coverage for the LeetCode Hard question.

Round 2: Implementing a Basic Calculator on Strings with Modifications

• Similar to the problem at: https://leetcode.com/problems/add-strings/, with modifications involving subtraction.

Round 3: LLD [Passed]

• Performed satisfactorily, received a positive evaluation.

Round 4: HLD [Reject]

• Tasked with designing a Mobile Check-in System and discussing how to build analytics on the stored data.

My Assessment:
Most of the interview rounds proceeded well, yielding decent results. However, the High-Level Design (HLD) System Design round proved to be quite unusual. The interviewer, who was the Hiring Manager (HM), rescheduled multiple times over three consecutive days and arrived 20 minutes late for the interview.

The final round seemed somewhat experimental, as the interviewer was seemingly being shadowed by senior personnel, and there appeared to be a lack of consensus regarding the round's nature. Initially, it began as a behavioral interview, but during the conversation, the decision was made, on the call, to switch to High-Level Design (HLD). It's worth noting that System Design rounds are typically time-intensive, and every minute counts.

Setting those issues aside, I began with a more generic and extensible solution but was frequently interrupted by the interviewer due to time constraints. I was then asked to focus on the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) only. Later in the interview, the same interviewer contradicted this approach and questioned why a more extensible and generic solution wasn't pursued. This inconsistency was confusing.

Overall Feedback:
I would recommend against assigning inexperienced "engineers" to interview senior-level engineers without prior experience in conducting such interviews. This approach risks the candidate's prospects and lacks fairness.

I would not recommend this organization to a friend unless there are no other job offers available. It appears that the workplace culture is reminiscent of Amazon, with potential issues such as a toxic work environment and biased individuals.

**Initially Offered Total Compensation (TC) for Level 5: ** 60-65 LPA Fixed, with no equity offered.