Hi everyone, I have attended the google interviews which happened between July and August and I wanted to write down my experience.\n\nRecruiter setup a phone screen round first which was basically an elimination round\n\nPhone screen question: Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/single-threaded-cpu/\n\nWithin 3 days, I got a call from the recruiter that I passed the phone screen and scheduled my onsites.\n\nOnsite 1: Binary tree question similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-cameras/description/ with a follow up. I was able to solve the given questions.\n\nOnsite 2: DSU based question similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/most-stones-removed-with-same-row-or-column/description/ with a follow up. I was able to solve the given questions.\n\nOnsite 3 (Googlyness): Behavioural based questions and my past experiences.\n\nOnsite 4: String question. I was able to write the brute force solution but not the optimised solution. I got negative feedback in this round. (I am not able to find a similar question and when I find, I will update this post)\n\nI got the feedbacks after a month since recruiter was OOO and some interviewers did not fill my complete feedback.\n\nRecruiter said that "overall" feedback is positive and the recruiter is moving my profile to team matching. It has been exactly 2 weeks now and I did not receive any update. So I guess I am rejected.\n\nHope this post is useful to the community since leetcode helped me so much in the preparation.

Google | L4 | India | Rejected

Phone - https://leetcode.com/problems/max-stack/description/ (Hard)\n\nOn-site -\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/all-oone-data-structure/description/ (Hard)\nImplement JSON parser (Hard)\n\nCraftsmanship - Refer https://leetcode.com/company/linkedin/discuss/4802112/LinkedIn-Onsite-or-Staff (copy-pasted below).\n\n====================\nCraftsmanship. Quality in the crafts. Outcomes matter. LinkedIn want engineers who are proud of their work and inspire their teams.\n\nDefine a quality product / system.\n\nTalk about a time where you failed to show good craftsmanship and what you would\'ve done better.\n\nDescribe your strategy regarding code reviews.\n\nTalk about a project that had many junior engineers and how I kept their quality high.\n\nTalk about a tine where you helped grow an engineers.\n\nIf your team keeps growing and you get more junior engineers, what do you do?\n\nHypothetical:\nImagine you join LinkedIn on a massive team that owns a legacy application. The application lacks adequate testing and monitoring and has slow response times. Consumers complain about this. Deployment of the application often contains bugs.\n\nRank the following in terms of priority: bugs, no testing, no monitoring, slowness\n\nWhat do you tackle first?\n\nHow do you eventually turn this into micro services?\n\nWhat kind of signals do you look for when prioritizing bugs?\n\nGive examples of "P0" bugs.\n\nWhat do you look for when determining the success of a service?\n\nWhat are the pros and cons of microservices vs monoliths?\n\n====================\n\nHiring Manager:\nWho am I and what do I do?\n\nDescribe my day-to-day role.\n\nHow big is my team?\n\nWhat is my tech stack?\n\nTalk about a project that had large scale.\n\nAnswer specific follow up questions about the project.\n\nWhat project do I consider the most significant?\n\nWhat\'s the most challenging aspect of that project.\n\nHypothetical:\nSuppose you join LinkedIn and you\'re asked to build a feature that sends suggested candidates to recruiters who have opened a new job profile.\n\nWhat\'s your overall approach?\n\nHow do you organize the team?\n\nWhat\'s your rollout / deployment approach?\n\n======================\n\nSystem Design - Design a system which identifies API requests as malicious using the request body by making a call to `isMalicious(requestBody)` that\'s available to you and then reject it. One of the non-functional requirement is to reduce the number of calls made to the `isMalicious(requestBody)` API by tracking IPs that send malicious requests.

LinkedIn | Staff | Phone + Virtual on-site | US | Reject

Status: Experienced Professional (3 YOE), Master\'s from Tier 1 Institute\nPosition: SDE2 at Amazon\nLocation: Bangalore, KA, India\nDate: September 13th 2024\n\nHad an OA in August, was followed up on by a recruiter 3 weeks later. \nThere were 4 rounds, 3 DSA and 1 HLD.\n\nEach round had a couple of Leadership Principles\' Questions each at the beginning. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the principles covered.\n\nOnsite Round 1 - Single DSA question with an extension.\nQuestion - [Postfix with Infix with minimal parantheses](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/5804082/Amazon-or-Onsite-or-Postfix-to-Infix-with-minimal-parantheses)\n\nSolved the question as well as the extension with the correct time and space complexities. Covered the edge cases. Interviewer valued the modularity of the code along with the correctness.\n\nOnsite Round 2 - Single DSA question with no extensions\nQuestion - [Longest Inclusive Range Pair](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/5804129/Amazon-or-Onsite-or-Longest-Inclusive-Range-Pair).\n\nSolved the question specifying the correct time and space complexities. \n\nOnsite Round 3 - Single DSA question with an extension \nQuestion - [Zigzag Traversal](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/5804168/Amazon-or-Onsite-or-Zigzag-Traversal).\n\nSolved the question specifying the correct time and space complexities. Solved the extension as well.\n\nSystem Design Round 4 - Single HLD question\n\nQuestion - [Update Mars Rover](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/system-design/5804312/Amazon-or-HLD-or-Update-Mars-Rover).\n\nWas a pretty interesting question. The initial vagueness and lack of specified requirements made for quiet an exploratory discussion. Went well all things considered.\n\nResult: Received an offer within 3 days of the final interview.

Amazon | SDE2 | Bangalore | Sep 2024 [Offer]

Status: New grad\nPosition: Graduate SDE I at Amazon (AWS Aurora)\nLocation: Dublin\n\n3 rounds:\nLeadership principles (1 hour):\n- Interview with the team manager.\n- Short introduction and 3 questions to cover 3 LP:\n\t- Tell me about a time you had to *deep dive*.\n\t- Tell me about a time you received negative feedback. What was your reaction?\n\t- *Customer obsession* (I don\'t remember the question)\n\nTechnical interview (1 hour):\n- Short introduction and 2 coding problems:\n\t- https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-k-sorted-lists/description/ but the input were k log files, and I had to merge the logs by timestamp (had to be formatted).\n\t- Given a service that returns the series watched in Prime Video by the users in the last `x` hours, find the most streamed series in the last `x` hours. The service returned a list of objects with `userID`, `titleID` and `timestamp`. Basically I had to call the service, count the number of occurrences for each `titleID` in the collection of objects and return the one that had the highest value (if there were more than one title with the highest value, returned them all).\n\nBehavioural and technical interview (1 hour):\n- Short introduction and 1 / 2 LP (I can\'t remember, but *deliver results* was asked).\n- 1 Coding problem:\n\t- Given a string `s` formatted like `foo=bar hello=world ...`, create a function that parses the string and stores the values in a data structure. Had to consider edge cases (no \'=\', multiples \'=\', empty param name, empty value, ...). After that, the interviewer told me to add a second parameter (dict) that contains the data types for each param. Had to consider additional test cases (invalid type conversion, invalid type, param does not appear in the dict, ...).

Amazon | Graduate SDE I | Dublin | Sept 2024 [Reject]

The last few months have been nothing short of challenging. I hadn\'t received my salary for the last four months and after that I was laid off.This was an incredibly tough phase, both financially and emotionally. \n\nI started applying for jobs regularly in early July, and the first company I interviewed at was ([**BharatX**](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5753820/BharatX-or-Backend-Engineer-or-Bengaluru-or-JULY-2024-(GHOSTED))). There were two rounds:\n1. **Project discussions**\n2. **Machine coding round**\n\nBoth rounds happened within a span of 7 days, and they went really well. I was hopeful about hearing something positive, but unfortunately, I never got a response. Despite my efforts to follow up via calls and emails, I received no reply.\n\n# The Rejections Pile Up\nI kept applying to multiple companies, and I got calls from notable ones like **Nutanix, Cred, HackerRank, FiMoney, Chalo, Swiggy, Uber, Meesho and Flexport**, but couldn\'t progress past the test/screening stages. \n\nNext, I interviewed at **[Cloudera (link for exp)](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5754031/Cloudera-or-Software-Engineer-(Golang)-or-JULY-2024-or-(ON-HOLD))**, my first opportunity with a big company. My first round was perfect \u2014 I answered everything about DSA, projects, internal workings of HashMap/Sets, hashing, and Linux. I felt confident when I received a call for the second round.\n\nIn the second and final round, which was with the hiring manager, I was expecting a mix of technical and HR questions, but it turned out to be entirely technical. We talked about the team I would potentially be joining.\n\nAfter such a positive experience, I was eagerly waiting for a selection. However, despite my follow-ups, the HR kept delaying the result.\n\n# More Interviews, More Hope, and More Waiting\nAround the same time, I received a referral for **[Razorpay (link for exp.)](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5754727/Razorpay-or-Software-Engineer-or-Bengaluru-or-August-2024-or-Rejected)**. There were two rounds:\n1. **Low-Level Design (LLD)**\n2. **Hiring Manager Round**\n\nI was hopeful for good news, but after multiple follow-ups, I was informed that I was rejected. This hit me hard. After giving what I felt were great interviews at both **Cloudera** and **Razorpay**, I couldn\'t figure out what went wrong.\n\nI also had a two-hour LLD interview at **[Allen Digital (link for exp)](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5758924/Allen-Digital-(Recro)-or-Software-Engineer-or-Bengaluru-or-Rejected)**, which didn\u2019t go as well, especially in terms of database design, and I was rejected.\n\nThen I gave 2 interviews at **[PICE](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/5759045/PICE-or-Backend-Engineer-or-Bengaluru-or-August-2024-or-Rejected)**, a fintech startup in Bangalore.\nEverything went pretty good in both the rounds, but I still got the rejection without any feedback. I kept asking myself what did I do wrong.\n\n# The Turning Point\nDespite the rejections, I kept learning and applying. I then received calls from **Confluent**, **Zomato**, and **Zepto** \u2014 three amazing opportunities.\n\nI gave:\n- **3 technical rounds** at **Confluent**\n- **1 interview** at **Zomato**\n- **3 technical rounds** at **Zepto**\n\nFinally, after a Culture Fit round at **Confluent**, I received the call I had been waiting for \u2014 **I was selected**! \nAfter few days, I received an offer from **Zepto** as well, but I decided to join **Confluent**. I also chose to withdraw from the process at **Zomato**, as my mind was already set.\n\n# Lessons Learned: Trust the Process\nAfter being approached by more than 20 companies and giving over 22 rounds of interviews, here\'s my biggest takeaway: **Things will happen when they are meant to happen**. No matter how hard we try, if something is meant for us, it will come to us at the right time.\n\nThat doesn\u2019t mean we stop trying. In fact, the only thing we can control is our effort \u2014 giving our best is all we can do from our side. We need to believe in ourselves and our skills.\n\nIf you\'re good enough, good things will come your way. All you need is a little time, persistence, and faith in yourself.\n\nPS - You can find my other posts here - [**Zomato**](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5763557/Zomato-or-Software-Engineer-or-Gurgaon-or-Sept-2024), **[Zepto](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5763474/Zepto-or-Software-Engineer-or-Bengaluru-or-September-2024-or-Offer)**, **[Confluent](https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5754364/Confluent-or-Software-Engineer-or-Remote)**\n

22 Interviews, Countless Rejections, and Finally: Confluent

Education: MCA from Tier 2 NIT\nYears of Experience: 6 Year and 1 months\nCurrent Compensation: 35.5 LPA + 1.25LPA (ESOPS)\n\nMrcrosoft (Azure): \nLevel: L62\nBase Salary: 39 LPA\nSigning bonus: 4 L (First Year) + 3.5 L (Second Year)\nStock Bonus: 65k USD for 4 years\nRelocation Bonus: 3 LPA + 1.5 LPA\nCash Bonus: upto 20 percent (average :10% -> 3.7)\nTotal Compensation:\n1st year: 39LPA + 3.7LPA + 4LPA + 4.5LPA + 13.64 LPA = 64.84 LPA\n2nd Year: 39LPA + 3.7LPA + 3.5LPA + 13.64 LPA = 59.84 LPA\n3rd Year onwards: 37 LPA + 3.7LPA + 13.64 LPA = 54.34\nBenefits: Standard Microsoft Benefits\n\nDeliveroo : \nLevel: SSE\nBase Salary: 63 LPA\nCash Bonus: 10 percent PB -> 6.3\nPF : 3L\nTotal Compensation:\n63LPA + 6.3LPA + 3LPA= 72.3 LPA\n\nLocation for both is Hyderabad.\nI wanted to make a decision of joining these companies based on WLB, Work Culture, Growth Potential and Job Stability. It would greatly help me if any of you guys can give some suggestions. Didn\'t know about Deliveroo before interview.

Need help in deciding the offer | Urgent| Deliveroo | Microsoft

Experience: 6 Years\nEducation: BTech NIT\nPrior Experience: MNC\n\n**Tech Screen Round** : Questions around past experience and projects.\n https://leetcode.com/problems/word-break/description/\n\n**Onsite Rounds**\n\n**Round 1**: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/palindrome-by-swapping-only-one-character/\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/house-robber/submissions/\nGave optimal working solutions for both.\n\n**Round 2**: https://leetcode.com/problems/group-anagrams/ Coded optimal working solution.\nTask Management Service HLD + LLD. Questions around class structure, different components that will be there.\n\n**Round 3**: Bar Tender. Questions around OCI leadership principles.\n\n**Round 4**: HM. HLD for Events broadcast service via multiple channels (sms, mails, push notifications etc). A lot of emphasis on how the events will be put into queue and how will they be consumed.\nDiscussion on projects, OAutth, CI/CD, Monitoring, metrics, some questions around DB.\n\nGot the feedback that they will have one more round around Design.\n\n**Round 5**: HLD of Resource inventory service for a cloud provider. Questions around DB schema, search capabilities, sharding decisions, VPC, subnets.\nGot stuck at a couple of places and overall round was average but was still expecting to make it through.\n\nVerdict: Rejected

OCI | SMTS | 6 Years | Reject

July-Aug 2024\n\nExperience: 6 Years\nEducation: BTech NIT\nPrior Experience: MNC\n\n**Karat Round**: 5 Design Rapid fire questions. 2 Coding questions. You are expected to solve min 4/5 design questions and 1.5 coding question fully working code for first and partial second with correct approach.\n\n**Round 1**: Code Design\nSome question around Subscription for different products with some followups. Do not remember the exact statement now.\n\n**Round 2**: Data Structures\nAll O(1) Data Structure. With couple of followups.\n\n**Round 3**: HLD\nDo not remember the exact question. Major emphasis on first making an MVP then talking about scalability and roboustness of the system.\n\n**Round 4**: Management\nStandard leadership questions and your impact on projects. Should focus on mentioning projects where you individually had a major impact. Keep multiple examples ready. \n\n**Round 5**: Values\nQuestions around Atlassian values.\n\nVerdit: Selected\n\nOverall the process took ~ 6 weeks.\n\nOffer details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5751996/Salesforce-SMTS-or-Atlassian-P40-or-Bangalore\n

Atlassian | P40 | Offer | 6 Years

Applied via referral at Apple. There were total 5 rounds, 1 online test and 4 interviews.\n\nRound 1 (Online test)\n\n1 leetcode medium dsa question and multiple questions related to automation testing framework\n\nRound 2\n\n1 leetcode medium dsa question and questions related to automation testing framework and test scenarios\n\nRound 3\n\n1 leetcode medium dsa question and questions related to automation testing framework and test scenarios\n\nRound 4\n\n1 leetcode medium dsa question and questions related to utility tools developed in previous org\n\nRound 5(HM)\n\nmanagerial and scenario based questions mostly and few questions related to frameworks\n\n\nResult:\nAfter 2 days recruiter reached out and informed that feedback is positive and after almost 2 weeks the recruiter shared the verbal numbers and after 1 month from the last round I received the official offer letter.\n\nCompensation: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5753277/APPLE-or-SDET-or-HYDERABAD-Offer\n\n

APPLE | SDET | HYDERABAD OFFER

Atlassian | P40 | Offer

**Current Employment Status**\nPosition: Senior Software Engineer Qualcomm\nLocation: Hyderabad\nDate: November 2024\n\n**Round 1 Online Assessment: 90 Minutes Codility Test**\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/best-time-to-buy-and-sell-stock\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/interleaving-string/description/\n\n**Round 2: DSA Technical Interview(45 Minutes)**\n1. Merge two B-Trees (Trees with value as list of integer)\n\n**Round 3: Technichal Interview(1 hour)**\nFocused mainly on OS concepts of Thread syncronization mutex and semaphores then we discussed producer consumer problem with several scenarios\n\n**Round 4 Technical Interview(1 hour)**\nFocussed on OS concepts mainly memory management asked to design a garbage collector.\n\n**Round 5 Technical and Behavioural Interview(1 hour)**\n1. Resume Project discussuion (20 Minutes)\n2. Design a Filesystem (20 Minutes)\n3. C++ RAII concepts (15 minutes)\n4. Question from me (5 minutes)\n\nResult: Interview cleared offer negoitation in progress

Microsoft | SDE 2 | Hyderabad | Passed | November 2024

Meta Interview Process for E4 SDE\n\nApplied through referral, got email to connect with recruiter in next 2 days. \nPhone call with recruiter lasted around 10minutes telephonic conversation\n* Discussed about favorite project\n* Scope of work\n* Day to day activities\n* Spoke about interview process\n* Asked for 2 weeks before attempting to schedule screening interview\n\nCoding Screening Round\n45 minutes\nDidnt spend more than a minute in introductions and went straight to coding.\n1) Separate odd and even integers, place odd integers in first part of array, followed by even integers.\n-Clarified requirements and edge cases like length of array, null or empty array\n-Explained my approach on how to handle it in optimized way\n-Coded quickly, completed dry run and discussed if solution solves edge cases\n\n2) Sum of root to leaf values in binary tree and represent in array\n-same way as above \n\nFeedback-\nstrong communication\nmissed edge case like negative number in 1st question and integer overflow\nInterviewer expected me to come up with all edge cases by myself\nCleared and moved to onsite\n\nConnected with technical recruiter on 60min call\nHe explained everything in detail about what to expect in each round for onsite\nTook 30 days to finally attempt onsite interviews splitted in 2 days (also spread over 2 weeks)\n\nOnsite-\n1) Coding Round1-\nClosest element to target in BST (return any closest not necessary to return smallest node)\n-followed same approach as code screening round\nMistake- took a very long example for dry run and wasted time - took around 25 minutes to finish it\n\nGiven a m*n binary array where value 1 represents blockage, 0 represents empty cell\nFind the path from source(0,0) to target(m-1,n-1)\nMistake- Confused if it had to be shortest path, explained bfs approach\nBut interviewer corrected me that it can be any path so I changed to dfs approach\nI chose iterative dfs.. spent a lot of time to code the solution as iterative is lengthier than recursive and focused on code modularity so wasted time there\nAt the end had to reverse the path and return result\nInterviewer was not getting why I had to flip the path, expalined it ...althiough I feel he had no clarity yet\nBegged for 1 more minute at end and completed writing the solution\nWent through 2 edge cases and wrote TC and SC\nNo time to dry run\n\n\n2) Coding round 2-\nK closest points from origin\nExplained approach.. went for minHeap\nDiscussed edge cases and got questions like why selected minHeap\nWhats the TC, SC if I would have chosen maxHeap\nHow to implement maxHeap in java in O(n) - Interviewer mentioned he recently got to know it can be done in O(n)\nI said its nice that such way exists will research later and just wanted to move to next question quickly\n\nDot product of vectors\nFollowup- what of one vector is sparse\nWhat will I use to optimize\nDiscussed map and arraylist solutions\nBinary search as well\nHad time left so also wrote interface to define sparse vector\n\n3) System design\nOnline coding platform that shows leaderboard\nWent for helloInterview solution\nBut interviewer was not satisfied with NoSQL DynamoDB and asked multiple followups on how schema should be defined\nInvested 10 minutes on this part itself\nHad last 5 min left and still had not reached to how will I design actual leaderboard\nSo jumped to that quickly\nWent for redis sorted set\nFollowup- how will it scale \n\n4) Behavioral\nDiscussed about project in detail\ngot asked about how many lines of actual code did I write in that 5 months long project\nConflict with Colleague\nConflict with Manager \nI explained that I have people manager so explained non tech example of conflict\n\nGot rejection in 2 weeks and no feedback\n\n\n \n\n

META | E4 | SFO | Oct 2024 [Reject]

**Current Status**\n\nCompany: One fo the top Investment Bank\nPosition: Associate (eq. SDE 2)\nLocation: Bangalore\nCurrent YOE:  4yrs 10months\n\n**Interview Details**\n\nCompany: Microsoft\nPosition: SDE II (L62)\nLocation: Hyderabad\nCurrent YOE:  4yrs 10months\nDate: June 2024\n\nI applied online through Micorosoft\'s careers page. I applied over many many job openings at Microsoft\'s careers page. I finally got a mail for online coding assessment and a call from HR after approx 30 days. He explained the interview process and also asked me some get to know questions. Told me you have to pass the OA in order to proceed to the on-site rounds.\n\nIn total, there was 1 OA + 4 on-site interviews.\n\n**Online Coding Assessment**\n\n**Time limit**: 1hr\n**Platform**: Codility\n**Type**: onine coding assessment\n**Self-Verdict**: Strong Hire\n\n2 DSA medium level questions.\nSeveral domain related MCQ questions.\n\nThen came 4 on-site rounds. R1, R2, R3, are supposed to take place same day, 2 in the first half of the day, another in second of the day. The fourth round is called AA round (some Microsoft term). \n\n**Round 1**\n\n**Time limit**: 1hr\n**Platform**: Microsoft Teams\n**Type**: Problem solving\n**Self-Verdict**: Strong Hire\n\nVery open ended questions about my current responsibilites, techincal questions related to my current work, some questions on how this handled , how that is handled.\nThese initial questions took almost 15 min. The we moved to a problem solving (sort of LLD) question on codility paltform. It was based on Trees.\n\nI think this question was an LLD question. But I approached it in a DSA style. But I didn\'t prepare for any of these Microsoft interview as I overloaded from other interviews. So, I did no special prep or any dedicated revision for Microsoft.\nThere were multiple open questions which I kept asking throughout the interview because those were needed to take some code design decisions.\nThroughout the interview he kept raising doubts, how will your code handle if this happens, if that happens.\nTowards the end of interview, I was able to provide a working solution. He even made me run the code for 2 test cases, and it worked flawlessly. \n\n**Round 2**\n\n**Time limit**: 1hr\n**Platform**: Microsoft Teams\n**Type**: DSA\n**Self-Verdict**: Lean Hire\n\nInterviewer was pretty chill and calm throughout the interview, he was supportive too.\n1 leetcode medium question was given: [Minimum Time to Collect All Apples in a Tree](https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-time-to-collect-all-apples-in-a-tree/description/)\n\nI never saw this question before. At first, I got confused and thought the algorithm has to find the time in minimum time complexity, and started writing the code. But this was not the case, your algorithm may travel the entire tree to find this out. You just have to find the min time value. After he clarified the expectations of the question, I was able to come up with the correct and working code.\nHe made me run the code. The code was producing correct output for all the test cases he gave.\n\n**Round 3**\n\n**Time limit**: 1hr\n**Platform**: Microsoft Teams\n**Type**: System Design\n**Self-Verdict**: Strong Hire\n\nA system design question to design something similar to Messengar was given.\nI addressed all the aspects in a very detailed manner: requirements, NFR, Scale, Estimates, Data modelling, Db strategy, constraints, bottlenecks, etc.\nNo specific platform was given, you can chose anyone you use for practice.\nLike any system design interview, he kept asking for flaws and challenges in my design, and I was able to handle all of them and gave convincing solutions to those.\n\n**Round 4 - AA Round**\n\n**Time limit**: 1hr\n**Platform**: Microsoft Teams\n**Type**: Open ended + LLD\n**Self-Verdict**: Strong Hire\n\nI don\'t remember much from this round but it was very open ended round. She asked about my current work, my role, some questions on my projects, etc. Then she gave some LLD question. She wasn\'t expecting an end to end written solution, she was only interested for me to design the core of the problem, which I remeber I was able to, and was able to address any challneges she pionted out in my design. \nShe clearly seemed convinced. She was the hiring manager as well.\n\n**Offer**: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/6020504/Microsoft-or-SDE2-(L62)-or-Hyderabad.\n\n<br><br>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft | SDE2 | Hyerabad | June 2024 [Offer]

A string can be broken into multiple strings and represented as a binary tree where each external node contains a string and a data field and each internal node in the tree contains a numerical value that is the sum of the data fields of its left and right child nodes. For example, if the left child has a data field of 5 and the right child has a data field of 7, the internal node would contain the sum of these values, 12. \nExample: ![image](https://assets.leetcode.com/users/images/599061ae-c164-434e-aed2-d732a4f04f97_1730879042.817082.png)\n\nSo, here the complete string would be APPLEPIEBANANA\n\n**Question**: Design a data structure that could represent the above tree.\nCreated a Node class, and two classes InternalNode node and ExternalNode would inherit from it. Interviewer seemed happy.\n**Follow up:** Find the Nth charater in the string.\nDid recursive function, where we can have a count variable, and at any node we can go either go left or right. So we can solve it on O(height of tree).

Google | Phone Screen | L4 | Reject

Hello LeetCode Community,\n\nI\u2019m excited to share my Google L4 interview experience, including the timeline and the mixed emotions I felt throughout the process.\n\n**Phone Screening [12-08-2024]:**\nI was given a formula with letters and parentheses and asked to remove all parentheses from the formula.\n\n**Outcome:** After 10 days, my recruiter informed me that the phone screening went well, and they would schedule the next round of interviews.\n\n**The Waiting Game:**\nAfter that, there was complete silence for a month. No emails, no calls, nothing. I honestly started feeling like they had put a hold on my application or frozen the hiring process.\n\nThen, in the last week of September, I finally got a call and was informed that my next rounds were scheduled.\n\n**Interview Rounds:**\n**Round 1 [08-10-2024]:**\nGraph problem involving a modified DFS approach. I messed up the first part of the code and ended up spending the entire time debugging it. As a result, I didn\u2019t have enough time to tackle the follow-up questions. It was a bit disappointing, but I pushed forward and didn\u2019t let it derail my confidence.\n\n**Round 2 [09-10-2024]:**\nThis round involved a job submission and completion problem. The first question was a standard LeetCode medium-level problem, and the follow-up added an extra layer of prioritization, which made it more complex, almost like a medium/hard level problem. I solved the first question correctly with a clean code and dry run using a test case. For the second question, I didn\u2019t finish the entire solution due to time constraints. I skipped a few minor parts of the code, as suggested by the interviewer, to focus on the main logic.\n\n**Round 3 [10-10-2024]:**\nThis round was similar (Not exactly same) to Meeting Rooms II and Meeting Rooms III \u2014 focused on handling meeting room allocation with added constraints. The first question was a medium-level LeetCode problem, while the follow-up was more challenging, bordering on medium/hard. I managed to solve both questions within 35 minutes, leaving us with extra time. We used that time to discuss alternative approaches and data structures, along with their pros and cons. This felt like a great opportunity to showcase my problem-solving approach and technical depth.\n\n**Round 4 [11-10-2024]: Googleyness**\nBehavioral interview with typical questions about my experience, teamwork, leadership, and conflict resolution.\n\nAfter completing the fourth round, I received the feedback:\n\n* **Round 1:** `Lean hire`\n* **Round 2:** `Hire`\n* **Round 3:** `Hire`\n* **Round 4 (Googleyness):** `Hire`\n\n**Team Matching [15-10-2024]:**\nThe first 10 minutes of the team matching interview were spent discussing my interests and experience. The next 10 minutes focused on explaining the team\u2019s work. In the final 5-10 minutes, I had the opportunity to ask the hiring manager any questions.\n\nI received confirmation from my recruiter within 15 minutes that I matched with the team. They asked for my decision, and I said yes.\n\nThe next day, my recruiter reached out for basic information. After that, there was another period of silence. I had no idea what was going on.\n\n**The Long Wait:**\nAfter 12 days, I received a message saying that the Hiring Committee (HC) had approved my packet. We discussed salary, and the following day I received the offer letter, which I happily accepted.\n\n**Final Thoughts:**\nIf you\u2019re feeling stuck or discouraged during your interview process, remember that the journey can be long and unpredictable. There will be moments of silence, uncertainty, and doubt. But persistence, patience, and staying motivated will pay off in the end. Keep going, and don\u2019t lose hope!\n\n**Compensation :** https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/6010463/Google-or-L4-or-Bangalore-or-Accepted\n\nThanks for reading, and best of luck to everyone on their own interview journeys!\n

Google | L4 | Bangalore | Accepted

Hi Folks, I  recently gave interview for an SRE-SE engineer role and I am not able to process that I got rejected in Googlyness round.\n\nCurrent Position: **DevOps Engineer in a Service based company**\nYOE: **3.3 yrs**\nPosition offered :  **SRE- Systems Engineer - L3**\nLocation: **Bangalore**\nCompensation: **same as SWE**\n\n\nI appiled directly on Google careers portal and got HR call within 2 days.\n\nOverall process took 4 months, HR reached out to me on june 23rd , since I had planned vacation starting from first week of july, I asked to start the process from August and we both agreed on timelines.\n\nHR asked my preference for interviews, either we can split the interview in multiple days or schedule all at once. I preferred split interviews.\n\nSRE-SE position is mostly mix of programming, troubleshooting issues, reducing toil of the systems, working on upgrading and making efficient systems.\n\nSRE-SE engineers do not require to be master in programming but atleast he/she should be able to solve a real time problem. for the first round, I prepared coding questions like below. I generated all the questions from chatGPT, I solved around 30 Hard, 50 medium and 50 easy questions and did all the variations of questions. \n```\nWrite a Python program to read a log file and extract all the lines that contain error messages.\nWrite a Python program to find the most frequent IP address in a log file.\nWrite a Python program to identify all failed login attempts in a log file and extract the usernames.\nWrite a Python program to extract and display metadata (e.g creation time, last modification time) from a file.\nWrite a Python program to compare the sizes of multiple files and identify the largest and smallest ones.\nWrite a Python program to filter out all lines in a file that start with a specific prefix.\n```\n\n**Round 1:- (Scripting + Linux Internals) - 12th August- Elimination Round**\nDuration 45 mins\nThis round was the easiest I would say, Interviewer asked one scripting question(based on  file manipulation in python, you are free to choose any programming language), It was a kind of finding duplicates. I solved within 15 mins and explained it in 2-3 mins.\nLinux Internals- some questions on Inode, components of Inode, networking commands, performance commands. I answered almost all the questions except 1-2.\n\nTips:- To prepare for first round, you should be well versed with Linux commands. suppose "top command  generates overall system related outputs, so interviwer might ask to write a script to extract commands that is taking more than more than 20% system cpu and it should be in running state". \n\nAsk clarifying questions and finalize a solution. I did pretty good in this round and was confident that I would pass.\n\nAfter 10 days HR reahed out to me via call and confirmed that we can move ahead.\n\n**Round 2- Scripting round - 2nd Sept**\nDuration 45 mins\nInterviewer was some onshore guy, he was taking interview from London office. He explained all the process in 2-3 mins. He also told me that he was going to assess my skills based on thinking, even if I am not able to complete the entire code it was fine to him.\n\nHe asked one real-time scripting question(based on dictionary) and put some conditions over it that I cannot use a particular module. so I had to think a solution and eventually I was able to solve that problem. since the question was too complicated, I took almost 15 mins to understand it and finalize a solution.\n\nI coded the solution in next 20 mins. He was satisfied with my solution. \nFor scripting round, prepare topics like Dictionary, Hashmaps, String manipulations, regex patterns, KMP algos, Rabin-Karp algo, backtracking.\nI did not prepare anything from leetcode, just listed all the patterns searching algos and prepared from GFG.\n\nSelf-assessment:- Hire\n\n**Round 3 - Linux Internals- 10th Sept**\nDuration 45 mins\nThis round was too problematic for me because the interviwer was from Poland and his vocal chord and accent was really bad, also he was taking interview while laying in bed...I was not able to understand what he was saying...I  asked multiple times to write on the shared docx whatever he was saying.\n\nHe just asked one command - ping - and made it too complicated that you can\'t even imagine. I was trying to shift his focus from that command but he was really stubborn and wanted me to solve that question with ping command only...I asked few clarifying questions and he gave me hints to use awk command. I was able to solve that problem by using awk and ping command, but it took almost 30-35 mins of our time.\n\nwe were left with only 10-15 mins for other questions...he asked me questions about screen/tmux and some networking commands - traceroute, nslookup, bg/fg, ssh sessions. I answered them all.\n\nSelf - assessment- Lean hire/\n```\nThese are the topics that you should cover for Linux Round:\n\nVirtual memory (Paging, demand paging, anonymous vs. file-backed memory, shared memory, page faults, dirty pages, page cache, swapping, memory mapping, memory protection, lazy allocation,  memory layout, overcommit, TLB, MMU, OOM)\nSignals (Know key signals such as SIGTERM, SIGSTP, SIGCHLD, SIGKILL, SIGSEG, signal handlers, signal masking, default handlers, tracing signals) \n\nProcesses (Exec/Fork, Zombie/Orphan, copy on write, Race Conditions After fork() ,Interruptible and uninterruptible Sleep, RSS Vs VSZ , Runqueue/Scheduler latency, Completely fair scheduler and other scheduler policies, Preemption, Context switching, CPU registers and caches, userspace threads/lightweight threads/coroutines,)\n\nInterprocess communication and Locking (Advantages / Disadvantages of each approach, a rough idea of how it\u2019s implemented, what are the system calls)\n  \nNetworking stack (which part is in the kernel, which part is handled by userspace libraries, common syscalls, sockfs)\nControl groups (what it is, how it works) and namespaces (unlikely but good to cover)\nSystem calls (you should know the 12 key system calls, how they are initiated, CPU protection rings, mode switch, userspace vs. kernel space)\n\nTracing (strace, ltrace, ptrace, perf, user-space tracing, kernel tracing)\nVirtual file system or VFS (pseudo-file-systems such as proc, sockfs, pipefs and how shared memory integrates with VFS, file descriptors, open file descriptions table, inodes, NFS, LVM, software RAID, extended file attributes, a bit about ACLs and SeLinux, SSD vs HDD, path resolving in linux)\n\n\nLinux boot process (unlikely but good to cover, rather high-level. BIOS -> MBR -> grub -> kernel -> init -> userspace)\nMain responsibilities of the kernel and init (remember to ask the questions, e.g., why do we need a kernel?)\nInterrupts (what events cause interrupts, interrupt context vs. thread context, how interrupts are executed, top half and bottom half, and a bit about interrupt masking)\n\nCommon Linux tools (iostat, vmstat, top, pidstat, uname, touch, rm, cd, kill, iotop, mount, df, du, lsof, etc. you should know when they are used, how they are used, and what is the output)\n```\n\nAfter these two rounds, HR called me after 2 weeks and told me that your Linux interview round has negative feedback(which I already expected). I told her that I was not able to understand the voice of the interviwer.\n\nShe told me that she\'ll still proceed with third round of Interview and if needed she can schedule the Linux inteview round again since it was not my fault, I told her that I was facing issues while listening to interviwer.\n\n**Round 4- Troubleshooting round- 30th sept**\nThis round was very interesting, I enjoyed a lot. The interviwer was very old person, we started by discussing an architecture issue that he pasted in the shared docx. He gave the scenarios based on the image and asked me to find the fix. we covered below topics while having discussions.\nPerformance \nI/O\nMemory\nStorage\nThroughput\nLoadbalanching\nCDN\nFirewalls\nSecurity\n\nYou have to dicuss each and every possibility to find the fix. He asked 7-8 questions related to infra issues, I was able to identify root cause of all the issues. Although the interview was intended to be around 45mins, but It got extended upto 90 mins.(yesss 90 mins\uD83D\uDE01\uD83D\uDE01)\n\nI did pretty well in this round. And Interviwer was very satisfied. \nSelf -assessment:- Strong Hire\n\nTroubleshooting round questions were very open ended, so you and your interviwer have to come to a common conclusion based on discussions, sometimes interviwer might have an answer already and he want you to come to that answer.\n\nBelow questions are just examples that I prepared, you can generate similar questions from chatGPT.\n\n```\nHow do you determine if a server is experiencing memory leaks?\nWhat debugging techniques would you use to diagnose a segmentation fault in a program?\nHow do you identify and mitigate DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on a server?\nExplain how you would troubleshoot a server experiencing high disk I/O wait times.\nHow to increase your I/O performance?\nYou are trying to run a command, but it says no more PIDs available. What can be the reason, and how will you solve the issue?\nHow would you handle a misbehaving process consuming excessive swap space?\nHow would you troubleshoot network communication between two servers?\nTroubleshooting a slow application \u2013 where do you start?\nHow would you troubleshoot a DNS resolution failure between two systems?\n```\n\n**Round 5- Googlyness- 30th Oct**\nI didn\'t expect that I\'d perform below average in this round. I really fu**ked this round myself.\n\nI prepared almost 25-30 scenario and Leadership questions before interview... I did almost 9-10 mocks with Gemini AI- Conversational AI. \n\nThe interviwer was Indian in this round and was leading one of the SRE team.\n\nWe started the interview with scenario based question that was too long and had 2-3 questions in same question. \nOne of the biggest mistake i did was not asking clarifying questions. I started giving answers based on the scenario and he started asking followup questions in-between , I answered them as well, but I forgot to answer the extra questions that was included in main question.(1st mistake), so you have to listen all the questions very carefully.\n\nHe asked one Leadership question as well, I again jumped into answering question rather than asking clarifying questions(blunder mistake), and while I was answering, I realized that "ohh damn! I am not giving answer what he is expecting and it was too late to come back or start again" and he caught me there. Till that time I realized that I ruined my inteview already. I kept my calm and smiled througout, but my heart was sinking. I was about to cry....\n\nQ1:- Tell me a time when you worked in a diverse team, what are the benefits of it and how do you make everyone satisfied on a particular subject in that team? Also how would you take feedback on conflicts in a diverse team?\n\nThere were 2 leadership questions, I can\'t reveal that question.\n\n\n**4th Nov**\nI got a call from my HR that my Googlyness round was not up to par, and they can\'t allow candidates to be weak or doubtful in answering Leadership questions. so even though all the rounds were good, I failed in Googlyness.\n\nThe overall process took around 4 months, I left all my entertainments, going-out, didn\'t applied anywhere to be focused on the Google only, but it was not in my destiny. Google was a dream that came to my door with open arms and i ruined it. idk how much time it\'ll take for me to process this failure.\n\nWishing you good Luck!!!....\n\nLet me know if you have any questions

Google SRE-SE | Bangalore | L3 | Rejected

**Status: New grad (2024 batch)\nPosition: Software Engineer 1\nLocation: Bengaluru, India\nDate: September 20, 2024**\n\n**Online Assessment**\nThere were 4 questions in total. The first question was **Minimum Number of Operations to Make Array Continuous** and the second one was **Maximum length of all possible K equal length ropes generated by cutting N ropes**.\n\n**Problem Solving Round [45 mins]**\nAfter both of the introductions, I was asked a multi source bfs question - Given a start node and an end node, how can we determine the shortest path from the start to the end while avoiding certain nodes within a \'k\' distance radius of designated \'thief\' nodes? These thief nodes impose a constraint, as any path within \'k\' distance from their current position should be avoided.\n\n**Coding Round [45 mins]**\nThe second interview round again began with introductions and then I was asked a Low Level Design question - Design a car reservation system to efficiently allocate a list of n cars to maximize the number of customers served. The solution should focus on optimizing resource utilization and ensuring that as many customer requests as possible are fulfilled.\n\n**Hiring Manager Round [30 mins]**\nThis round focused mainly on personality and situation based questions. A couple of questions that I remember are - \n* Are you a heart or a head type of person?\n* Why would you like to join Uber?\n* Questions about leadership positions that I had mentioned in my resume. \n* How did you handle teammates who were not taking their work seriously? Explained with examples.\n* Career aspirations.\n\n**Result**\nTwo days after the interviews, I got a zoom link for a discussion with my recruiter where they informed me that I have been selected!

Uber | Software Engineer 1 (L3) | Bengaluru, India | Sept 2024 (Offer)

**Status: New grad (2024 batch)\nPosition: Software Engineer 1\nLocation: Bengaluru, India\nDate: September 20, 2024**\n\n**Online Assessment**\nThere were 4 questions in total. The first question was **Minimum Number of Operations to Make Array Continuous**(Leetcode) and the second one was **Maximum length of all possible K equal length ropes generated by cutting N ropes** (GeeksForGeeks).\n\n**Problem Solving Round [45 mins]**\nAfter both of the introductions, I was asked a multi source bfs question - Given a start node and an end node, how can we determine the shortest path from the start to the end while avoiding certain nodes within a \'k\' distance radius of designated \'thief\' nodes? These thief nodes impose a constraint, as any path within \'k\' distance from their current position should be avoided.\n\n**Coding Round [45 mins]**\nThe second interview round again began with introductions and then I was asked a Low Level Design question - Design a car reservation system to efficiently allocate a list of n cars to maximize the number of customers served. The solution should focus on optimizing resource utilization and ensuring that as many customer requests as possible are fulfilled.\n\n**Hiring Manager Round [30 mins]**\nThis round focused mainly on personality and situation based questions. A couple of questions that I remember are - \n* Are you a heart or a head type of person?\n* Why would you like to join Uber?\n* Questions about leadership positions that I had mentioned in my resume. \n* How did you handle teammates who were not taking their work seriously? Explained with examples.\n* Career aspirations.\n\n**Result**\nTwo days after the interviews, I got a zoom link for a discussion with my recruiter where they informed me that I have been selected!

Uber | Software Engineer 1 (L3) | Bengaluru, India | Sept 2024 [Offer]

Status: Experienced\nPosition: SDEII at MNC\nLocation: Remote, India\nDate: October 20, 2024\n\nRecruiter reached out to me for SWE3 role on LinkedIN. \nI asked for 3 weeks for preparation as I am out of touch from DSA. All rounds were in virtual rounds.\n\nTechnical phone screen (45 minutes):\n - Introductions\n - Question: https://leetcode.com/problems/time-taken-to-cross-the-door (variation of this)\n\nOnsite (4 rounds): \n - Onsite Round I: https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-beauty-of-an-array-after-applying-operation/description/ (variation of this where m is given maximum paint operation with favorite color c that you can do apply to block. the operation should be in a way to maximise the length of continous blocks or beautiful path for the color c) \n\n - Onsite Round II: given string s, substring one can be in range i, j  and substring two can be in range j+1, k, find number of all such substring pair such that distinct characters present in both substring are same.  Example: ababac pairs: [ab ab], [ab aba], [aba ba], [ba ba] Output: 4\n\n- Onsite Round III: You are given an undirected tree and can apply at most k operations on it. In one operation, remove a leaf vertex and its adjacent edge. A leaf vertex is a vertex that is connected to exactly one other vertex. Minimize the tree\'s diameter by applying the operation as many as k times. \nUse the following assumptions: "The distance between two vertices is the number of edges in their shortest path. The diameter of a tree is the maximum distance among all pairs of vertices in the tree."\nReturn the minimum possible diameter after applying at most k operations.\n\n\n\t\t\t5       \u2192  tree size n = 5 \n\t\t\t1       \u2192  number of operations k = 1 \n\t\t\t4       \u2192  edges[] rows n-1 = 4 \n\t\t\t2       \u2192  edges[] cols = 2 \n\t\t\t1 2     \u2192  edges = [[1, 2], [1, 3], [1, 4], [3, 5]] \n\t\t\t1 3\n\t\t\t1 4\n\t\t\t3 5\n\t\t\tOutput: 2 \n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\nRecruiter called and informed got Lean Hire, No Hire, LeanHire. So not proceeding further.\n\n\n\n\n

Google | SWE3 | Hyderabad, India | October 2024 [Reject]

**Status: New grad (2024 batch)\nPosition: Software Engineer 1\nLocation: Bengaluru, India\nDate: September 20, 2024**\n\n**Online Assessment**\nThere were 4 questions in total. All four of the questions can be found [here](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/uber-interview-experience-for-sde-1-off-campus-2021/).\n\n**Problem Solving Round [45 mins]**\nAfter both of the introductions, I was asked a multi source bfs question - Given a start node and an end node, how can we determine the shortest path from the start to the end while avoiding certain nodes within a \'k\' distance radius of designated \'thief\' nodes? These thief nodes impose a constraint, as any path within \'k\' distance from their current position should be avoided.\n\n**Coding Round [45 mins]**\nThe second interview round again began with introductions and then I was asked a Low Level Design question - Design a car reservation system to efficiently allocate a list of n cars to maximize the number of customers served. The solution should focus on optimizing resource utilization and ensuring that as many customer requests as possible are fulfilled.\n\n**Hiring Manager Round [30 mins]**\nThis round focused mainly on personality and situation based questions. A couple of questions that I remember are - \n* Are you a heart or a head type of person?\n* Why would you like to join Uber?\n* Questions about leadership positions that I had mentioned in my resume. \n* How did you handle teammates who were not taking their work seriously? Explained with examples.\n* Career aspirations.\n\n**Result**\nTwo days after the interviews, I got a zoom link for a discussion with my recruiter where they informed me that I have been selected!\n

I had my 1 hour E-Screen session for an E6 SWE role based out of New York City. I was asked a slight variation of [Palidcromic Substrings](https://leetcode.com/problems/palindromic-substrings/description/) asking to return ALL possible palindroms and [Range Sum of BST](https://leetcode.com/problems/range-sum-of-bst/description/).\n\n24 hours later I got a call from the recruter informing me that I nailed the interview and was passing to the next stage still targeting an E6 role. So, now I need to plan to start adding System Design into my study plan!\n\nMain advice is keep grinding on the 30-day Meta list and the LC top 150, hopefully twice, and don\'t forget to schedule the mock interview with the recruiter.\n\nGood luck to y\'all

Meta E6 E-Screen - NYC - Passed!

1.  behaviroal\n2.  another behavioral \n3.  coding 1 : group shift string - tree diameter\n4.  coding 2 : LRU cache - basic calculator\n5.  product arch : Instgram news feed\n\nIt was a rejection after all with one year cooling period.

Meta SWE E4 - Onsite US - Reject

**Status: 5th Semester Engineering Student at Tier-1 College\nPosition: SWE Intern 2025 at Google (Interview Experience)\nLocation: Bangalore, India\nThis was an On-campus opportunity**\n\n**Online Assessment:**\nThe process began with an online assessment on HackerEarth, which included 2 DSA questions. I solved one completely, while the second was only partially completed. The results led to an interview invitation soon after.\n\n**Technical Interview 1:**\nThis round began immediately with questions\u2014no introduction, just straight into coding. The interviewer pasted a short snippet in the Google coding interface, and I had to clarify the problem further, generate test cases, and offer a solution. I initially approached it with recursion, but the interviewer encouraged me to use a bottom-up approach. Despite my efforts, I couldn\u2019t fully grasp the question as it was unclear and non-standard. I wrote the recursive solution and explained its time and space complexity before wrapping up.\n\nTwo days later, I received an invite for the second round.\n\n**Technical Interview 2:**\nIn the second round, I was asked a range query problem, similar to "make all elements in an array equal using +1 or -1 operations." I explained and coded a near-optimal solution, though I couldn\u2019t reach the most efficient answer, which I suspect involved difference arrays. The interviewer also gave a follow-up question, which I solved and implemented while discussing complexities. He wrapped up with some theoretical questions on data structures I\u2019d used.\n\n**Verdict:**\n**Result: Rejected.**\nReflecting on this experience, I feel that cracking a Google offer requires extensive question practice and deeper understanding of concepts with a strong competitive programming (CP) orientation. Most importantly, I realized the value of thoroughly clarifying and unfolding questions by discussing them in depth with the interviewer. This experience highlighted areas for improvement, and I\u2019m motivated to sharpen my skills for future opportunities.

Google | SWE INTERN 2025 | Bangalore, India | August 2024 | Rejected

Date: October, 2024\n\nHow I applied: I applied via a referral, got rejection the next day. Then I applied directly after a while to a new opening. I don\'t know which application worked. HR contacted me after a month of my last application.\n\nInterview Rounds:\n\n1. Screening Round(Karat):\nSystem design questions from [this interview experience](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/2019600/Atlassian-or-SDE-2-or-Bangalore-or-April-2022-or-Rejected) and DSA questions from [this interview experience](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5705221/Atlassian-or-Senior-Software-Engineer-or-Bengaluru-or-August-Offer).\nI was able to complete 1 DSA question and partial question two(also gave the correct approach). Not sure how I did in SD but I cleared this round.\nYou get two attempts with Karat. Second attempt gets cancelled if you clear the first one. You need to schedule the second attempt after the first one is done. \n\n2. Coding Round:\nStandard Rate Limiting question with atlassian. Did it using token bucket algo. Used strategy design pattern as well. There was a follow up regarding we want to roll over unutilised requests to the next window upto a maximum limit. I was able to solve that too.\n\n3. Coding Round:\nRound 2 from [this interview experience](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1504593/Atlassian-or-SDE-2-or-P4-or-September-2021-or-Bangalore-or-Offer). There was a follow up mentioning hierarichal collections (one collection can contain sub collections). Solved fully.\n\n4. System Design Round:\nDesign popular feed for confluence (similar to youtube trends). Not personalized. User shouldn\'t see the content they have already seen and it should be a realtime sort of system without much delay in updating top n. Had healthy discussions, went pretty good.\n\n5. Management Round:\nSituational Questions. Discussed projects as examples (not really technical details). Stuff like conflicts, how did you convince someone of your design etc. Milestones of project etc.\n\n6. Values Round:\nA question about each value of atlassian. Situational with examples.\n\nTook around a week after last round to get hire call from HC and team matching done the next day.\n\nCompensation: \nhttps://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5982538/atlassian-sde-2-p40-remote/2699541

Atlassian | SDE-2 (P40) | Remote | 2024  [Offer]

Status: 5 YOE at startups + freelance. Tier-2/3 university.\nPosition: Senior engineer at EU startup.\nLocation: US\nDate: Summer of 2024\n\nSo I finally found the motivation to write this post about my recent interview experience with Meta, where I received my first MAANG offer. I won\u2019t disclose specific questions for obvious reasons. This post is more of a motivator because many people say you need to clear all of the interviews perfectly to get an offer\u2014that wasn\'t the case for me, yet I still passed. In each of my interviews, there were actually some challenges and areas for improvement\n\n**Screening interview (coding, 45 min):**\n\nI was asked two questions: one easy and one medium. I completed the first question flawlessly, but the second question was a variation of a popular question I had solved before, which I only realized during the implementation phase. The interviewer began asking follow-up questions about the problem itself and some general algorithm questions, like why I chose BFS over DFS, how each works, and the trade-offs between them. My dry run for the second question was quite slow since I selected a complex example. Midway through the dry run, I even told the interviewer something like, \'This is going to take a while to complete, but I think we\u2019re okay here.\' (not my best move), but the interviewer insisted that I continue debugging. Overall, I spent about 15 minutes on the first question and 25 minutes on the second. Both questions were solved optimally. The next day, I got a message that I had passed to the virtual onsite.\n\n**Virtual onsite (4 rounds):**\n**Coding 1 (45 min):**\nI was given two questions again: one easy and one medium. I solved the easy one flawlessly in 10 minutes. For the medium question, I initially came up with an O(N\xB3) time complexity solution, then optimized it to O(N\xB2). After that, I was asked to optimize it further to O(N). It took me a while, but I eventually figured out how to achieve O(N) time complexity and explained it to the interviewer before coding it out. I felt good about the interview at first, but afterward, I realized my code didn\u2019t handle some edge cases. There was also a more efficient solution with O(1) space complexity (mine used O(N)), and I had made a typos. At this point, I felt it would likely be a \u2018lean hire\u2019 at best.\n\n**Coding 2 (45 min):**\nI was given two questions: the first one was medium difficulty, and the second was easy but had many edge cases. I solved the medium question without issues, but I struggled with the second one. I made some bugs, didn\u2019t clarify edge cases, and didn\u2019t even consider them. However, both questions were generally solved optimally. Spent ~20 minutes for each question. Once again, I didn\u2019t feel great about the round and thought it would likely result in a \u2018lean hire\'.\n\n**System Design (45 min):**\nThis was the most challenging interview for me, as I hadn\u2019t had a system design interview before (only mock ones), and I was given a fairly uncommon problem. I did well in clarifying the scope, designing the high-level design (HLD), and answering some follow-up questions from the interviewer. However, my design wasn\u2019t scalable and wouldn\u2019t work effectively at scale, which I realized after completing the HLD. I pointed this out to the interviewer, and he agreed. From my perspective, this was my weakest round. It\u2019s not that I did very poorly, but I felt I was \'not good enough,\' so I expected a \'lean hire\' at best.\n\n**Behavioural (45 min):**\nThis was a generally relaxed round, and I connected well with the interviewer. Some of the questions were well-suited to my experience, and I even had a few stories that could be considered for an E5 level. There were a lot of follow-ups on these stories, so make sure your examples are well-prepared and genuine. After the interview, though, I realized during self-reflection that I talked too much about failures and \'areas for improvement.\' I even thought, \'Dude, why you were talking that much about how bad you are instead of talking how good you are :D?\'. So it was hard for me to judge if I actually did well or not. Thought it might be something from "lean hire" to "strong hire" depending how they will score talking about weaknesses.\n\nSo all these rounds were not perfect, i was expecting to get "follow-up rounds" at best, but...\nTwo days after the final interview, I received a message saying I passed the debrief and was moving to HC. \nThe next day, I got another message that I had passed HC.\n\n**Preparation advices:**\nFor algo:\n\n- Make sure to solve the top Meta questions on LeetCode.\n- Always follow a framework for coding:\n  1. Get a question \u2192 clarify to ensure you understand it correctly, including possible inputs and edge cases.\n  2. Write a function definition (input parameters, output parameters, and their data types).\n  3. Explain your approach and confirm the interviewer understands it.\n  4. State the expected time and memory complexity(Or you can make it after implementation. Just make sure interviewer is satisfied with efficiency of your approach before implementing it).\n  5. Implement the code, explaining each step out loud.\n  6. Quickly review the code for syntax errors, readability, naming conventions, and code reuse.\n  7. Do a dry run. If there is a time, do 2. First one on a simple example, second on a more complex example. \n- Be very careful. Interviewers often ask popular questions with slight tweaks. Even if you\'ve solved a similar problem before, don\u2019t rely on memory alone, as you might fall into the trap of solving the wrong problem.\n\nFor system design:\n- Follow a framework for system design as well:\n  1. Get a question\n  2. Define the functional requirements.\n  3. Define the non-functional requirements.\n  4. Do calculations (if needed).\n  5. Create a high-level design.\n  6. Handle deep dives..\n- Don\'t waste time. I found this interview to be the hardest in terms of time management because the scope is extensive. Spend your time wisely. Try to identify the \'main puzzle\' of the problem and go to it as quickly as possible. For example, if you are asked to \'design a task scheduler,\' it\u2019s unlikely that your interviewer will be interested in details like \'which load balancing algorithm to choose.\' Instead, they will want to know how you plan to run tasks at a specific time, how you will track task execution, how to ensure tasks are completed even in the event of failures, and how to prevent tasks from running twice. Therefore, only mention other aspects briefly and focus on solving the main puzzle\n\nFor behavioral interviews:\nCreate stories for popular questions on the internet in a STAR format according to the level for which you are aiming. Make sure they are real(you will be asked about details)\n\n**General advices:**\n- Try to be proactive and lead the interview\u2014don\u2019t wait for the interviewer to guide you. But it does not mean you should ignore your interviewer, engage but only when it makes sense(for example asking about possible edge cases).\n\n- Do as many mock interviews as possible. Try to find a community of people who practice together. There are a lot of skills you can\u2019t fully practice just by solving LeetCode problems or watching system design materials, including:\n  1. Time management.\n  2. Staying calm when you\u2019re stuck, and knowing how to get unstuck.\n  3. Talking through your thought process out loud.\n  4. Clarifying ambiquoity(Leetcode problems are well defined with a clear input/output definition, real interviews... Not always.)\n  5. Practicing your interview framework.\n\nIn fact, four years ago, I had an interview with Google. At that time, I was much more prepared in terms of pure algorithms knowledge, but I completely failed the onsite because I hadn\u2019t done mock interviews so i felt very nervous during the actual interviews and realized that i can\'t think and talk at the same time, especially in English :D.\n\nThis is my first MAANG offer and second try with big tech companies overall so i super excited about opportunity. Overall the process was not that hard, but you need to prepare correctly and also don\'t be hard on yourself if you fail, remember that it is a game of numbers -> Interviews are very random\nWish everyone good luck.

Meta | SWE | E4 | US [Offer]

**Status: B.Tech in CSE at Tier-1 College\nPosition: SWE Summer Intern 2025 at LinkedIn\nLocation: Bangalore, India\nOffer Date: October 2024****\n\n**Online Assessment:**\nThe assessment consisted of 3 DSA questions to be solved in 1.5 hours, with a mix of LeetCode and competitive programming patterns (2 medium and 1 hard). I solved all questions within 85 minutes and received an interview call about a week later.\n\n**Technical Interview (1 hour):**\nAfter brief introductions, we dove straight into the questions. I was given two dynamic programming problems, both standard yet requiring clear understanding. The first question was solved completely, and I explained the approach for the second. Both questions were of medium LeetCode difficulty, with the second slightly trickier.\n\n**Host Manager Round (45 minutes):**\nThis was a conversational round with an engineering manager from LinkedIn India. We covered behavioral questions, and I discussed one of my real-world projects in detail. The manager asked questions on various aspects of the project, and our conversation extended to the life of software engineers and LinkedIn\'s tech culture. My project experience seemed to leave a strong impression.\n\nOverall, the interviewers were friendly and supportive, as was the hiring team.\n\n**Result:**\nThe anticipation was overwhelming\u2014I couldn\u2019t sleep the entire night. LinkedIn typically sends the offer email the day after the interview, so I kept my hopes high. By the next afternoon, I tried to relax by watching a movie when my phone lit up with a notification: **"Congratulations on your offer."** At that moment, I was on cloud nine. It was the happiest moment of my life, filled with excitement and gratitude. I haven\'t stopped thinking about the journey and experience awaiting me at LinkedIn, and I still can\u2019t believe I\u2019ve checked this aspiration off my list.\n\n**Outcome: Successfully offered the SWE Intern position at LinkedIn for Summer 2025.**\n\n**Advice/Suggestions:-**\n1. Believe in yourself, pray to God. Getting many rejections helps you realise the  value of what you will acheive when that single opportunity comes.\n2. I believe consistency and levelling up gradually helps you to succeed.\n3. Be honest in your preparation. Nowadays being honest to yourself is the key to crack companies as there is a hell lot of cheating in contests and instead of refining skills people are figuring out ways to cheat and secure high ratings. \n4. "Where there is a will, there is a way" and "Don\'t worry about the outcome, put in all your efforts".\nIf any one else has also received the same offer please connect with me.\n**Thank You for reading this article. Do like and support if it helped you.**

LinkedIn | SWE Intern 2025 | Bangalore, India | October, 2024 [Offer]

Hi!\n\nI\'ve recently interviewed for an SRE role in Google for L4.\nAbout me: 6+ YoE, 2+ as Senior C++ at the last company, MS in Computer Science.\n\nThe process is usual - phone screen, 4 onsite rounds (3 DSA, 1 behavioral).\n\nBy the time of the phone screen I had around 180 - 200 solved problems here. Really liked [this leetcode list](https://leetcode.com/studyplan/top-interview-150/), I strongly recommend solving everything in it before your interviews.\n\n___\n\n**Phone screen:**\nQuestion: find avg of the last ```n``` elements in a stream, provide an interface for users. (I\'ve seen this problem here somewhere, but couldn\'t found the link)\nFollow-up: ignore a few of the highest values.\n\nI came up with a solution pretty fast, explained it to the interviewer, and implemented it, same with the follow-up.\n***Feedback:*** positive, move to onsite.\n___\n\nI waited for feedback for a few days. Then, I received an email to schedule on-site rounds. I chose four consecutive days, but selecting interview days with any time in between is okay.\nI continued preparation for onsite rounds and had around 300 solved problems in time for interviews.\n\n___\n\n**Onsite 1 (DSA):**\nFollow-up was [this](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-increasing-subsequence-ii/description/). In original question there was no ```k``` as a variable, it was always ```1```. \nI\'ve come up with *O(n)* solution for the original question and *O(n\\*logn)* for the follow-up. The interviewer was okay with this complexity, unlike this leetcode problem:)\n\nI felt quite good and confident after this round.\n\n**Onsite 2 (DSA):**\nQuestion for finding a shortest path in a graph. Not a hard one, but you have to write not only algorithm, but read a graph, process and return a result. Solved with BFS.\nFollow-up required to run a few BFSs.\n\nThe recruiter was really friendly, and I felt like he was happy with my solutions. I was happy after this round, but a few hours later, I came up with a better solution that did not require saving the shortest paths. So, I was a little disappointed and unsure at this point. \n\xAF\\\\\\_(\u30C4)\\_/\xAF\n\n**Onsite 3 (DSA):**\nThis round was the hardest for me. The question was on the topic of topological sort, which I haven\'t had much experience with. I\'ve suggested multiple different approaches, and they didn\'t work quite well. During the interview, I was thinking out loud and suggesting and discovering that my suggestions weren\'t good enough. Sometimes, the interviewer said something about why it was not good enough. I found this a little bit helpful, as I wasn\'t concentrating much on wrong approaches.\nAnyway, about 20 minutes into the interview, I came up with some sort of solution and spent the rest of the time coding, verifying, and fixing a few bugs.\nIn the end, I was told that this problem is actually a graph problem, and it would be nice if I recognized it.\nObviously, there was no follow-up, as the time had ended.\n\nI felt like I completely screwed this interview. Later, I found that not all the questions required follow-up, which made me a little more comfortable.\n\n**Onsite 4 (behavioral):**\nStandard questions like we all have seen on the internet.\nI felt like the interviewer was happy with my answers.\n\n____\n\nAbout a week later, I received a call from the recruiter, who said that I did well and that all of the feedback was positive. I haven\'t asked for specific grades, but he said that almost all were perfect, and one was okay. So, I think it could be 3 Strong hires / hire and 1 hire / lean hire. The recruiter said that Google wants to go forward with me.\nThat was the good part of the call. Next he said, that Google does not have open positions right now and all I can do for now is wait for openings.\n___\n\nAbout one month later, the recruiter called again and said that there was an opening and the HM would like to have a quick chat with me, nothing technical. We scheduled a call with the HM, and a few days later, the recruiter called again and said that the manager liked me and that if I was okay, they would continue with my application and move it to HC. The recruiter said that he does not expect any troubles with HC as all my feedback is positive.\nSo, now I\'m waiting and hoping for good news :)\n___\n\n**UPD:**\nI accepted the offer:)

Google London | L4 | Aug - Oct 24 [Offer accepted]

30 minutes interview with a member of the team. After a short introduction, I had to solve a problem.\n\nYou are given two 8-characters long strings made of A, G, C or T (`start` and `end`). You are also given `bank`, that contains mutations of the string. You have to find the minimum number of mutations to get from `start` string to `end`, considering a mutation as the edition of 1 character. For every step, the mutation should be included in bank. If there is no path, return `-1`. `start` is considered a valid mutation even if it does not appear in `bank`.\n\nExample 1:\n```python\nstart = \'ACCCCCCC\', end = \'AAAACCCC\', bank = [\'AACCCCCC\', \'AAACCCCC\', \'AAAACCCC\']\nOutput: 3\nMutations: ACCCCCCC -> AACCCCCC -> AAACCCCC -> AAAACCCC. All mutations are in `bank`.\n```\n\nExample 2:\n```python\nstart = \'ACCCCCCC\', end = \'AAAACCCC\', bank = [\'AACCCCCC\', \'AAAACCCC\']\nOutput: -1\nThere is no path such that all mutations are in `bank` (\'AAACCCCC\' is not in `bank`).\n```\n\nProposed solution:\nTransform `bank` to `set` for efficient lookup. BFS.

Microsoft | SWE I | Oct 2024 | Technical Screening [Passed]

I have 6.5 years of experiewnce in ML\n\nFirst technical round went well. One coding question and some design questions. Dont remember the exact question but it was something like a list of numbers and i had to find a set based on prefix sum idea. \n\nVirtual round (5 rounds)\n\n**Coding round**\n\nQuestion was a list of tuple is given example \n```\n[(abc,START,10), (def,START,20), (def,END,30), (abc,END,40)]\n```\n<func_name, Start/end, time>\n\nFind the inlcusve time and exclusive time for a function like abc\ninclusive time is abc start time - abc end time\nexclusive time is (40-10) - (30-20) for this example.\n\nI solved it pretty good since if you watch it closly then it converts to alternate plus and minus for the exclusive time calucation. Was able to solve the variants also and answered all questions.\nVariants were if abc is repeated and if the start and end of functions are random.\n\n**Statistics**\n\nI messed this one up (hear me out)\nThe question was\n```\nAssume there is a list of numbers which is basically points on the x axis\nYou have to find the point with the minimum distance travel from all the points\n```\n\nI started on a bad note (i dont think its that bad but i was not able to convinve the interviewer that it was not a bad approach). I said, assume its a one dimenestinal k-means problem and i will choose any random number as the centroid and will optimize from there by calucating the mean and moving the centroids till it stops moving. Interviewer started asking why i am using k-means here. I said, just think with me, if it will not work then we will try a different approach but he was not having it.\n\nBasically the answer is if the points are even, then median is the min point, if its odd then any point between the middle two are min point. I used almost 45 mins to come to this solution and after iterations.\n\nThis is what costs me my interview.\n\n**Data Mining Product Design**\n\nThis went well, the interviewer asked me about ways to improve the recommendation of existing linkedin given some new features and limitations and asked me to focus more on the data and model. It was a good 1 hr talk and i explained everythign from data gathering, to cleaning, to model selection to training, validation (offline, online)\n\n**HM call**\n\nSame old discussion about the projects , how i did, what i did, in details from models to data to every decision that i took\n\n**Data Mining**\n\nThe interviewer was a Staff scientist (same as statistics call) and he asked me EVERYTHING (linear, logistics, tree, NN, RN, LSTM, LLM, all types of offiline validations for different types of models like classification, ranking, forecasting, NLP, NN, regularization methods) I was able to answer all the questions and he mentioned that I answered good and he was finished up with all the questions 15 mins before the end of the call and we had a very good discussion about his projects and he asekd me suggestions on how to add a new vertical in linkedin search, i asnwered and he was convinced with it (he said that). \n\nI got a generic rejection email next day without any feedback.\n

LinkedIn Senior AI engineer, Bay Area (Rejected)

\nGraduation : Tier 1 non-cse\nYears of Experience: 3.2 YOE\nCurrent comp: ~34LPA\nApplication : Recruited reached out to me.\n\nTeam: oracle health\n\n**Round 1 Screening ( Strong Hire ) **\n\nHe touched on multiple points :\nDSA: asked me question on removal of node on tree, validate BST & left view of binary tree.\nLLD: asked me about factory pattern and told to implement in our own IDE by taking any scenario.\nHLD: few questions around data replication, sharding etc. \n\nOnce you clear the screening Oracle sets up the loop interview i.e. all 4 round will be mandatory which will consists of HLD, LLD, DSA and bar raiser round i.e mostly related to culture fit , behavioural etc. \n\n**Round 2 ( Problem Solving + LLD - taken by senior developer ) - ( Lean Hire / Reject ) **\n\nDSA: https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-integer/description/ ( wasn\'t able to solve this as I got a bit panicked. Hence, lean hire/reject ) \nLLD: Factory Pattern implementation\nGrilled a lot on Java features ex how garbage collection works ? what\'s new in java 8/11/17 ? Funtional Interface etc and gave few scenarios to which needs to be implemented via stream api etc. \n\n**Round 3 ( System Design - taken by director) ** - ( Strong Hire)\n\nDesign a notification system and include health and monitoring platform.\n\n**Round 4 ( LLD + Project Discussion- taken by senior developer) ** - ( Strong Hire)\n\nLLD: Design IAM kinda permission for a system i.e. a given user can access certain things based upon permission which he/she is assigned by manager and also create db schemas for these.\nDetailed Project Discussion and cross questioning of why this design is used etc etc. \nAgain lot of questions around java 8\n\n**Round 5 ( Culter Fit round - taken by another team\'s manager ) ** - ( Hire )\n\nStandard questions like:\nWhat happens during a clash over design ? How would you resolve that\nWhat is the reason for changing company ? \nAny project which have completely taken care from scratch ? \nAny mentoring which you did during your stint ? \n\nPS: Never ever take these rounds lightly, if they feel something fishy no matter how well you do technically they won\'t hire you. \n\n**` Verdict: Selected  `**\n\nCompenstation Link: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5865121/Oracle-(-Non-OCI-)-or-SMTS-(-IC3)\n\nGiving back to the developer community, a place that has always been generous and continues to grow without expecting anything in return.

Oracle ( Non-OCI ) | SMTS ( IC3)  | Accepted

Status: 5 YOE\nPosition: Senior Engineer\nLocation: NYC\n\nI had a recruiter reach out to me via linkedIn to apply, after which I was immediately set up with a technical screening later in the week.\n\nTechnical round was typical, 20 mins on resume, 40 mins on problems.\n\nThe interviewer asked high level system design questions and had me design a component of a toy system (No tagged question of theirs was even slightly similar to the problem), which I did not finish with the given time.\n\nrecieved rejection 2 days later.

Bloomberg | SSE | New York | 2024 | [Reject]

Had another episode of interviewing with a bunch of incompetent folks. A non FAANG firm. I had talks with 4 senior folks.\n\nInitially the position was mentioned as an **Architect**.\n\nIn a first discussion with the HM, he mentioned that it is now for a **Principal Engineer** (one level down). It was a red flag, but I still went ahead.\n\nI got interview scheduled which mentioned **Architect**!!\n\nThe interviewers were all thinking that it was for **Architect** position.\n\nThe discussions went great, except for 2. One dude kept pushing me on why we are using `rust` for something like a control plane design. Even after mentioning multiple times that we evaluated all possibilities, and rust seemed best suited due to internal libraries and frameworks were already in `rust`, he was arrogant enough to say : \u201Coh this will fail\u201D, \u201Cthis is designed for failure\u201D, "this will not scale", without actually mentioning any reasoning behind those atrocious claims.\n\nThe other dude was supposed to take a behavioral interview. He joined 10 minutes late. And in the last 15 minutes, he jumped to \u201Cdesign uber\u201D. I was surprised. I still did it pretty well.\n\nA week went by, and they didn\u2019t even bother to update me on anything. I mailed them asking if there\u2019s an update. A dry reply comes \u201Coh unfortunately it didn\u2019t work out for **Architect**.\u201D WTH, wasn\u2019t it PE position anyway? Plus, you were expecting to just ghost me.\n\nOn interview content: they were pretty lame and very doable. There was nothing that I could have done *better*. I was very happy and satisfied with my answers.

zscaler | Principal Engineer | Rejected

Just want to share my interview experience on July 2024. Sorry for sharing it late just got mental breakdance Lol. They said for the leveling would be based on the interview feedbacks.\n\nMy work of experience: 3-4 years.\n\nI don\'t get any feedback from them. I am not sure why they can\'t give me any feedbacks for the rejection.\n\n\nInterview Phase. So here is my subjective result\n\n1. Technical Phone Screen: Hire\n\nAfter I got email that I passed. Then I got 4 interviews in 2 days.\n\n1. Coding Interview: Strong Hire (I think it was medium coding question from my perspective)\n2. Coding Interview: Strong Hire (I think it was medium coding question from my perspective)\n3. System Design: Either Lean Hire or Hire (not sure either) (It was medium-hard system design question)\n4. Behavioral: Either Lean Hire or Hire (Might be tends to Hire)\n\nAfter A month then I got rejection email lol. I was expecting at least L3/L4 but neither comes true Haha.\nI am actually 100% sure, I aced the coding interviews so i expect at least L3. Hope I can share the questions, but I signed the NDA to not disclose the questions. I also already forgot about the coding questions that asked lol.\n\nI got info from my friend as former Meta, that L4 is already fulfilled by early this year and only wants L5. But somehow there is someone later from my junior university that got L3. Hahaha I guess that is not the case.\n\nOverall good experience of interview, but somehow I want to know what is the feedbacks.\n\nGood luck guys\n

Meta | Rejected | Aim for E4 | London

I recently went through the interview loop for L5 SDE role at Google. Here\'s my experience.\nPhone Screen: A creative question on an n-ary tree. Nothing that can be found on leetcode. But it was solvable. Round went ok and I proceeded to onsite\n\nOnsite-1: Question related to sliding window along with simple follow. \nSelf-assessment: Hire\n\nOnsite-2: DP question on strings. Again simple enough with a tricky follow-up.\nSelf-assessment: Hire\n\nOnsite-3: Question related to number theory. Fortunately, I am strong in this area and got through this round the fastest! \nSelf-assessment: Strong Hire!\n\nOnsite-4: Standard system design question related to one of the Google products.\nSelf-assessment: Hire/Lean Hire\n\nRecruiter came back with a negative for the system design round and my loop ended right then and there. \nI enquired if I can at least be considered for a downgrade, but recruiter mentioned that they don\'t any hiring managers who are looking for L4 currently.\n\nPrepared real hard for the interview. Don\'t know where to go from here. I am devastated actually, given that things were going so well in the interviews that I almost started mini celebrations after my System design round!\n\nMy advice for others:\nDon\'t underestimate the power of luck in Google interviews and have a plan-B cushion ready to fallback to, otherwise you will fall very hard like me.\n

Google | L5 | Rejected

I recently appeared for an SDE-1 interview at Amazon. The process started with an online assessment (OA), followed by three coding rounds. Here\'s a breakdown of the interview process.\n\nLink to OA questions: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/5328967/amazon-oa-sde-1-results-awaited\n\nThen there were 3 coding rounds, last one was combining the HM+Coding. Here are the questions\n**First coding round:**\nQ1. **Merge Intervals** (Optimal Solution)\nThe problem is a classic: given a set of intervals, merge all overlapping intervals and return the result. While the typical solution has a time complexity of **O(nlogn)**, I was asked to optimize further using a counting sort-like approach.\n**Approach:**\n**Brute force**: Sort the intervals by their start times and then merge overlapping intervals. This takes ***O(nlogn)*** due to sorting.\n**Optimal approach:**\nInstead of sorting, you can leverage counting sort, which works when the range of values in the intervals is known and relatively small. This allows processing intervals in linear time, \nO(n), by mapping the start and end points of intervals and merging accordingly.\n```\n# Example intervals\nintervals = [[1, 3], [2, 6], [8, 10], [15, 18]]\n\n# Merged Output: [[1, 6], [8, 10], [15, 18]]\n```\n\nQ2. **Find Convergent Point on a Graph**\nYou are given a directed graph represented as an adjacency list. Find a node (if any) that can be reached directly from every other node but has no outgoing edges. This is essentially finding a "sink" node.\n**Approach:**\n\n*In-degree & out-degree:*\nIterate through the adjacency list and count the in-degree and out-degree of each node. The node with in-degree equal to the total number of nodes minus one and out-degree zero is the convergent point.\n\n*DFS/BFS traversal:*\nThis approach involves exploring paths to find a node where no further traversal is possible, and all other nodes can reach it.\n```\n# Adjacency list of the graph\nadj_list = {1: [3], 2: [3], 3: [], 4: [3]}\n\n# Convergent Point: Node 3\n```\n\n**Second coding round:**\nQ1. **Find Largest Element in Every Window of Size \'k\'**\nGiven an array, find the largest element in every sliding window of size \'\uD835\uDC58\'. The sliding window moves from left to right by one element at a time.\n**Approach (Using Max-Heap):**\nMax-Heap: Use a max-heap.\nSliding Window: As we slide the window from left to right across the array, we add the current element to the heap.\nHeap Maintenance: Remove any elements that fall outside the current window. The heap\u2019s top (maximum element) is the largest value in the current window.\nTime Complexity: Each insertion and deletion from the heap takes O(logk), and we do this n times, so the time complexity is **O(nlogk)**.\n```\narr = [1, 3, -1, -3, 5, 3, 6, 7]\nk = 3\n# Output: [3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7]\n```\n\nQ2. **Find Two Sum in a BST**\nGiven a Binary Search Tree (BST) and a target, find two nodes whose sum equals the target.\n**Approach:**\n*In-order traversal:*\nPerform an in-order traversal to convert the BST into a sorted array, then use the two-pointer technique to find the two elements whose sum equals the target.\n\n*Hashing:*\nWhile traversing the BST, store the nodes\u2019 values in a hash set. For each node, check if the complement (target - node value) exists in the set.\n\n```\n# BST elements: 5, 3, 6, 2, 4, 7\ntarget = 9\n# Output: True (Nodes 4 and 5 sum to 9)\n```\n\n**Third coding round:**\nQ1. **Behavioral Question:\nTell me a time where you were not able to meet a deadline.**\nFor this, I discussed a project where unexpected technical difficulties delayed the progress. I explained how I communicated the delay early, collaborated with the team for solutions, and worked overtime to mitigate the delay. Highlighting the lessons learned and steps taken to improve future task estimation and project management.\n\nQ2. **Push All Zeros to the End of Array**\nWrite a function to move all zeroes in an array to the end while maintaining the order of the non-zero elements.\n\n**Approach:**\nUse a *two-pointer approach*:\nTraverse the array with one pointer.\nEach time you encounter a non-zero, swap it with the element at the second pointer (which tracks the position for non-zero values).\nTime complexity is O(n) and space complexity is O(1).\n\nGuys I\'ve 2 YOE at semi-product based company in Bangalore, I\'ve recently joined a startup with 18 base, and total 19 CTC. Should I go to Amazon for SDE-1 in 12 months contract where they\'re offering almost 22-23 base only, nothing else. Is it worth it?

Amazon SDE-1 Contractual || Bangalore || Offer

Resume shortlisting\n\nInterview - \nStarted with my introduction followed by 2 dsa questions, 1. Flatten n-ary tree, 2. Preorder traversal of a tree with pointer as parent, right sibling and left child. I correctly answer both of them and was seelcted for next round.\n\n2. System Design round (50min)\nDesign an ecommerce website.\n\nVerdict: I was not selected.

Google | Application Engineer Intern | Sept 2024 [Reject]

I recently completed a Meta interview process that included:\n\nBehavioral Interview: This went exceptionally well, thanks to mock interviews with former Meta employees that helped me understand exactly what was expected.\n\nMachine Learning System Design:\n\nRecommendation Problem: I designed a system to recommend interesting visiting locations.\nClassification Problem: The task was to detect illegal item sales on MarketPlace.\nCoding Interviews:\n\nFirst Session:\nI solved a merging intervals problem, but this time the intervals were represented as a linked list, and the output also needed to be a linked list. This is a hot topic question right now. I solved it optimally with some help from the interviewer.\nThe second problem involved finding the best fly and return days based on daily prices, which I solved suboptimally.\n\nSecond Session:\nThe questions were from Meta\u2019s top 100 tagged questions. I did well on the first one, but for the second, I introduced a small bug that I couldn\'t catch.\n\nAlthough I performed strongly in the behavioral and system design interviews, I struggled a bit with the coding challenges.\n\n After a week and a half, I received a rejection email.

Meta | E6 | Virtual Interview + Rejection

College: Tier 1.5\nEducation: B.Tech(EE)\nYears of experience: 2 years 8 months at time of offer\nPrev Company: Amazon\n\nApplied via Linkedin easy apply. Got a call from recruiter after approx 2 months in jan and scheduled interviews in february.\n\nNote: Almost all questions asked are on leetcode and tagged with linkedin. Id strongly advise getting premium and practicising tagged questions.\n\nPhone Screen : [1Hr]\n\n\n```\nAfter formal introductions the interview started with some CS fundamental questions from networking, OS like threads vs process, tcp vs udp etc\n\nAfter that I was asked two DSA questions of LC medium level from trees and dp.\nOn the next day recruiter reached out telling the round was cleared and wanted availaiblity for on-sites \n```\nRound 1: DSA [1hr]\n\n```\nTwo question were asked one however I do not remember them. Both were of Medium difficulty. \nRound went very well\n```\nRound 2: DSA [1hr]\n\n\n```\nIn this round also there were 2 questions of medium difficulty however had a bad experience since the interviewer couldnt explain the question well and didnt answer my clarifying questions satisfactorily and i ran out of time while implementing the second question.\n```\n\nRound 3: HLD [1hr]\n\n\n```\nI was asked to design a Key Value Store where an interface was given to me which could append something to a file, get bytes from an offset from a file and create a file. Initially was asked to design a single machine kv store but later we discussed about making it distributed and sharded. Round went well.\n```\nRound 4: Concurrency [1hr]\n\n```\n\nIn this one was asked to design a Delayed Scheduler.\nSo expectation was to given the logic and also give code for it, similar to what we do in DSA interviews. This is a standard Linkedin Concurrency round question however followups were hard.\n```\nRound 5: HM [1hr]\n\n```\nHad a discussion around the past projects of past companies. For one of the projects was made to deep dive. Also some behavioural questions were asked\n```\n\nI was asked to give another dsa round where i was asked 2 medium difficulty questions.\nAfter this Offer was given and details can be found here: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5908346/LinkedIn-or-SWE-or-Bangaloreor-2.8-yoe-at-time-of-offer

Linkedin | SWE | Bangalore | February 2024 [Offer]

Interview Experience at Oracle for Software Developer Position\n\nInterview Process Overview\nInitial Recruiter Contact\n* Date: 3rd week of July 2024\n* I received an email from the recruiter regarding a Java Developer position, along with a link to the online assessment (OA).\n\nOnline Assessment\n* Date of Completion: 19th July 2024\n* I completed the assessment on the given date and received a confirmation email on 20th July 2024, inviting me to an in-person interview.\n\t\n-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nRound 1: On-site Interview (Technical Round)\n**Interviewers**: Two interviewers were present\nThis round focused on fundamental topics, including Java basics, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA), Puzzles, and SQL.\n\n**Java and OOP Questions:**\n* Why does Java have wrapper classes for primitive data types?\n* I was asked to analyze and explain the output of the following code:\n```\npublic class Main(){\n\tpublic static void main(String[] arg){\n\t\tString name = "Name";\n\t\tString name1 = new String("Name");\n\t\tsystem.out.print(name == name1);\n\t\treturn;\n\t}\n};\n```\n* Further questions on OOP covered inheritance, different types of inheritance, and whether Java supports multiple inheritance.\n* Questions on abstract classes and several code analysis tasks were presented, including the following code samples:\n```\n\tpublic class Main(){\n\tint a = 20;\n\tpublic static void main(String[] arg){\n\t\tsystem.out.print(a);\n\t\treturn;\n\t}\n};\n``` \n```\n\tclass A{\n\t\tpublic void fun(){\n\t\t\tSystem.out.print("Hello from A");\n\t\t}\n\t};\n\t\n\tclass B extencs A{\n\t\tpublic void fun(){\n\t\t\tSystem.out.print("Hello from B");\n\t\t}\n\t\tpublic void fun1(){\n\t\t\tSystem.out.print("Hello from function1");\n\t\t\treturn;\n\t\t}\n\t};\n\t\n\t\n\tpublic class Main(){\n\tpublic static void main(String[] arg){\n\t\t// In the discussion they have added each line of code and ask output.\n\t\tA obj = new A();\n\t\tB obj1 = new B();\n\t\tobj.fun();\n\t\tobj1.fun();\n\t\tobj1.fun1();\n\t\tobj = new B();\n\t\tobj.fun();\n\t\tobj.fun1();\n\t\tobj1 = new A();\n\t\tobj1.fun();\n\t\tobj1.fun1();\n\t\treturn;\n\t}\n```\n\n```\n\tabstract class A{\n\t\tpublic abstract void fun();\n\t\tpublic static void fun1(){\n\t\t\tSystem.out.print("Hello world!");\n\t\t}\n\t};\n\n\tpublic class Main(){\n\tpublic static void main(String[] arg){\n\t\tA.fun1();\n\t\treturn;\n\t}\n};\n``` \n**DSA Questions:**\nThe he moves to DSA rounds and ask me two question.\n1. Maximum Sum Subarray: The interviewer noted my familiarity with the problem and asked me to explain the approach to confirm my understanding.\n2. Median of an Array of Integers: Initially, I proposed sorting the array, but when they added that the integers were received as a stream, I suggested an insertion sort and then refined it using two priority queues.\n\n**SQL Questions:**\nBased on my project experience (YouTube clone), the interviewers presented a scenario involving user, video, and comment tables. They asked me to write a query to retrieve the name of the user whose video had the maximum number of comments.\n\n**Puzzles:**\n\nThey ask me 4 puzzles.\n1. 3 Bulbs and 3 Switches from gfg.\n2. 8 balls problem from gfg.\n3. 10 Coins Puzzle from gfg.\n4. The final puzzle involved a scenario with five houses and a thief who changes houses daily, moving to an adjacent house. I was asked to devise the optimal strategy for the police to catch the thief and calculate the minimum number of days required.\n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nRound 2: On-site Interview (Technical Round)\n**Technical Round**\n**Interviewers**: One interviewer was present.\nThis round focused on system design and quantitative problems.\n**Quantitative Questions:**\n\t1. A time and work-related problem\n\t2. A permutation and combination (PNC) problem\n\n**System Design (High-Level Desing)**\n\tI was asked to design an elevator system for a 10-floor building with four elevator cars.\n\n----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nFinal Stages\n\nThree days after the interviews, I received a call from a manager who conducted a deep-dive review of my CV. At the end of the call, the manager verbally confirmed the offer.\n\nOne week later, I received an email regarding the background verification process, and after approximately 2 months, I received the official offer letter.\n\n\n

Oracle | Software Engineer | Onsite | Bengaluru | [offer]

Google | L5 | bengaluru | Apr-June 2024 [Offer]\n\nStatus: Tier 1 College\nPrevious position: L63 @Microsoft\nLocation: Noida, India\nDate: April 2024\n\n\nThe interview process and format of each interview, for example:\n 3 Technical Rounds, 1 System Design, 1 Googlyness\n\n**In 1st Round**, asked to write API\'s for a service which takes out of order video frames but forwards them in order for processing.  Consider your services receives frsmes froom another service which could be out if order but your service forwards them to another service always in sequence (based on timestamp). After a lot of clarifying questions, created a class with  SaveFrame() and GetFrame() functions using unordered_map and list. Discussed in length about concurrency problems and resolved some issues using mutexes and double locking approach. Went okay-ish\n\n**2nd Round** was related to BFS. (Similar to leetcode 2101). Completed in 25 mins. After this came a follow up question. Was able to solve that as well. Went great.\n\n**3rd round** was a again DSA round and the question was related to SCC components. coded the question in 30 mins. Then we had in-depth discussions on multiple alternate approaches as to which I would prefer and why. This was pretty slick round. The interviewer seemed okay with my rationalization. Went great.\n\n**4th round** was System design. Asked to create a service which interacts with twitter and indexes their entire news feed data.  Had problem while designing on google docs but interviewer understood the pain and was quite liberal in that regard. This went great.\n\n**5th round** Googlyness round had pretty standard questions. nswered based on my prev. experience (one can google them). This went good.\n\nFinal fit call happened after a week of all interviews and was finally provided an offer. Happily accepted.\n\nThank you Leetcode community.\n\nOffer details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5882950/Google-L5-Offer-or-Bengaluru

Google L5  Interview Experience India [Offer]

**Position:** Software Engineer I (L60) at Microsoft  \n**Location:** Bengaluru, India  \n**Date:** August 2024  \n\n\n---\n\n### Interview Process\n\n#### Initial Recruiter Contact\n- **Date:** 30th July 2024  \n- Received an email and call from the recruiter asking if I was interested in a specific job ID for Microsoft.  \n\n---\n\n### Online Assessment (4th August 2024)\n\n- **Completed the test:** 4th August 2024  \n- **Cleared the assessment:** Received an email on 6th August 2024 confirming I had cleared the online assessment and to be available for technical interviews on 14th August 2024.  \n\n---\n\n### Round 1 (14th August 2024)\n**Interviewers: Two interviewers were present.**\n**Problem:** Median of Two Sorted Arrays (O(log(m+n)) complexity)  \n\n**Follow-up Questions:**\n- What if one of the arrays is empty?\n- How do you handle arrays of unequal sizes?\n- Can you prove that a linear solution (O(m+n)) would not be efficient for larger datasets?\n- Explain the conditions for finding the correct partition during binary search.\n- Was asked a lot of edge cases by the 2nd interviewer (senior guy but was doing shadow).\n\n---\n\n### Round 2 (14th August 2024)\n**Interviewers: Two interviewers were present.**\n**Problem:** Supermarket Promotion (Total Prize Money Calculation)  \n\n**Follow-up Questions:**\n- How would you optimize the solution for time and space complexity?\n- What if all receipts on some days were the same?\n- Can you suggest alternate data structures for handling max/min extraction?\n- How would you handle days with very few receipts (e.g., k=0)?\n- Was asked a lot of edge cases .\n\n---\n\n### Round 3 (14th August 2024)\n\n**Scenario:** Policy Management Service Design  \n\n**Follow-up Questions:**\n- Design the database schema for storing policies.\n- How would you index the database to efficiently handle GET requests?\n- How would you manage policies that are frequently updated or queried?\n- Additional follow-up questions related to design and optimization.\n\n---\n\n### Round 4 (19th August 2024)\n\n- Interviewed by a senior engineer with 20 years of experience.  \n- Discussion of high-level project details, reasons for wanting to join Microsoft, and why I wanted to leave my current company.  \n\n**Questions:**\n- Explain the high-level design (HLD) of projects on your resume.\n- **REST API Question:** How to debug a 401 error from the client?\n- **Performance Question:** Page load time is too long; what steps would you take to find the root cause?\n- **JavaScript Performance:** The first request is slow because the JavaScript is taking time to load\u2014how would you resolve this?\n- **Monotonic Stack Design:**\n    - Design a stack where values only increase or decrease.\n    - Push elements greater than or equal to the current top element and ensure pop operations return expected results.\n    - Discuss the push and pop operations and potential issues with element loss.\n\n**Behavioral Questions:**\n- How do you approach a feature with limited context, particularly when tasked with improving efficiency by 15%?\n- How do you coordinate with other teams when needed for context?\n- If there is little opportunity for improvement, how would you communicate this to your team lead?\n\n---\n\n### Selection and Offer\n\n- **Selection Confirmation:** Received confirmation on 20th August 2024, the day after my AA round.\n\n---\n\n### HR & Offer\n\n- **HR BGV Mail:** 22nd August 2024. Requested Bengaluru location instead of Hyderabad.  \n- **Offer Letter Received:** 27th August 2024.\n\n---\n\n### Decision\n\n- I had two offers in hand at the time, with the other company offering a Software Development Engineer II (SDE II) role and a higher base salary compared to Microsoft\'s offer. However, considering the prestige, growth potential, and long-term career opportunities at Microsoft, I decided to move forward with their offer, despite the lower base salary as the ctc was higher due to stocks.\n\nYOE at the time of Interview:   1.11 years of experience

Microsoft | Software Engineer | L60 | Bengaluru | Hyderabad | India | [Offer]

Current role: SDE at unicorn\nLocation: India\n\n**HR phone screen (20 Mins)**:\n - Basic Behavioral questions\n - Experience in DSA, LLD\n - Reason for change\n\nAfter this call HR shared OA test link.\n\n**Online Assessment (OA)**:\n - 2 DSA questions. (LC Hard)\n - Work simulation with design decisions.\n - Work style assessment\n\t\n**Onsite (4 rounds)**: \n**Round 1 (1 Hour)**: \n- Two LP Questions\n- 2 Medium level DSA questions from DP and Tree.\n- Expectation was writing clean code, coming with multiple approaches, dry run the code, provide time and space complexity.\n\n**Round 2 (1 Hour)**: \n- Two LP Questions\n- 2 Medium-Hard level DSA questions from Modified tree and Trie.\n- Focus was on modular and reusable code, dry running code, provide time and space complexity.\n\n**Round 3 (1 Hour)**: \n- LP Questions, situational questions. (Took majority time)\n- 1 Hard DSA question. (Combination of Modified tree and DP)\n- Focus was on coming up with multiple approaches, modular and reusable code, dry running approach, provide time and space complexity.\n\n**Round 4 (HM Round) (1 Hour)**: \n- 2-3 LP Questions, work simulation, reason for change etc.\n- System Design of a well-known system covering and satisfying Functional and Non-functional requirements.\n- Focus was on Availability, Scalability of the system with very low latency. \n- Discussion about team, product for which I\'m interviewing.\n\n**Note**: Research about the team and role you are interviewing, be very thorough with Leadership principles, prepare examples for each, don\'t repeat them, answer them in STAR format.\n\nOffer: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5870098/Amazon-or-SDE2-or-Hyderabad\n\n***Will add preparation strategy for DSA, HLD, LLD if folks need it.***

Amazon | SDE2 | Hyderabad | Sep 2024 [Offer]

Status: 4 YOE\nPosition: SWE (quit my previous job due to lack of growth) \nLocation: New York\n\n\nI interviewed for 2 SSE positions In new York. The interview consisted of the following rounds:\n\n1. HR round where I described my experience and applied for 2 SSE roles.\n2. Phone screen (1 hour). I got LC medium question for 1 team and LC hard for another.\n3. Got moved to onsite for both teams. For the first team, I passed all technical rounds and was moved to the hiring manager round. \nFor second team, I felt that I did well on the technical rounds, but did not get to the hiring manager round. \n4. I received rejection emails for both positions with no feedback. I\'m not sure what they are looking for. It seems like it depends on whether the hiring manager likes you or not.\n\n\n

Hello - just wanted to share my SDE 2 interview experience in case it is helpful to someone in the same shoes.\n\n**Recruiter Cold Email:**\nA recruiter reached out to me regarding an opportunity to work on large scale, distirbuted systems on amazon stores. She had sourced my resume from their DB and thought that I would be a great candidate for the SDE2 role. I already had a job as a SWE 3 at JPMC. I have good pay and a great role working with modern tech (AWS, Kakfa, Spark, Java) on a cool project. I thought why not give it a shot anyways, the worst that can happen is I get rejected and would still be good with my current role.\n\n**Online-Assessment:**\nRecruiter moved me forward to the OA stage. I took it and cleared it. It had 2 medium level coding questions in 90 minutes. The questions weren\'t from leetcode, but if you have been practicing leetcode, it\'s pretty doable. One is about arrays and the other about strings.\n\n**Final round:**\nAfter clearing the OA, she moved me directly to the final round and said the hiring manager really likes my profile and wants me to expedite the process. I had the final round on 09/30/24. It was 4 interviews, 1 hour each, which consisted of 30 mins LP questions and 30 mins technical. The technical questions included 2 coding, 1 system design, and 1 low level design (class and interface level). The interviewers weren\'t expecting me to completely finish the coding questions, they just wanted to analyze and observe my problem solving. They were all happy with my solutions and approaches. In fact, they\'ve all said if I had a few more mins I\'d have finished this. So they can see where I was headed with my solution. System desing went well. LLD part, didn\'t go as great, but I still got buy in from interviewer. Coding questions were graph related (BFS/DFS) and time interval. They were embedded in a business like problem statement, so you\'d have to extract out the core problem.\n\n**Result:**\n2 days later, I received automated response that they weren\'t moving forward with me. I thought overall I had a good performance, but looks like it wasn\'t enough. If I was to bet on what it was, I\'d say either the LLD section or the overall LP responses I had. Which from the interview, interviewers mentioned what I was saying made sense. Anyways, it was good experience. I am not losing sleep over it. I know that interviews are just a numbers game.\n\n**Advice:**\nPractice leetcode daily on the days leading up to your final round. Do medium problems. Hard is overkill for SDE2 given that you get 25-30 mins to code. They mostly care about problem solving skills. Second advice is, practice LP questions. Leverage STAR framework, it makes it easy for interviewers to follow.

Amazon SDE 2 Interview Experience | Texas | [Reject]

My onsite consisted of 4 rounds\n\n**Round 1**: Hiring manager \nQ1: There\'s an increasing number of wrong/incorrect orders and deliveries. Tell me how would you approach solving this problem. \nQ2: Tell me about a time when you got critical feedback and how you reacted/responded to it.\nI think there were a couple more "tell me about a time when" questions but I forgot.\n\n\n**Round2**: System design\nQ1: Walked through a project that I think was most challenging. Described non-tech and tech challenges\nQ2: System design: design review and rating system for food items of restaurants.\n\n\n**Round 3**: Code craft\nOk no, it\'s not leetcode.\nImplement an API that has several dependency API calls to downstream services. I am given templates/abstraction of those dependency API calls. \nThings I addressed:\n1. 4xx/5xx error handling\n2. Parallelizing API calls\n3. Retries\n4. Some refactoring so that won\'t repeat too much code for repeated API calls\n\n**Round 4**: Debugging\nSomeone has mentioned it in some other post. It\'s round robin algorithm. I\'m given the implementation and unit tests. The bugs are in both the implementation and the tests. The end goal is when hit "Run" all tests should pass.\n\n

Doordash onsite | SDE2 Backend | Reject

Giving back to the community.\n\nCoding:\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/max-consecutive-ones-iii/description/\n3. https://leetcode.com/problems/lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree-iii\n4. https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/5810859/meta-virtual-onsite-e5-us/2643643\n\nProduct Design:\n1. Instagram Feed with images and videos\n2. Dropbox

Meta | E6 | US | Reject

Sharing my Amazon interview experience as a Master\u2019s new grad with 4 YoE in software development outside of the US\n\n**May 23rd**: Recruiter reached out via Linkedin\n\n**June 21st**: Completed the OA\n* 2 coding questions that can be solved with greedy algorithms\n* work simulation that involved system design decisions\n* work style assessment\n\n**June 24th**: Recruiter informed that I passed the OA\n**July 24th**: Virtual Onsite\n* 2 LP questions before each techincal question\n\t* I did a lot of mock interviews with current Amazon employees which I think was very helpful. All interviewers were very satisfied with my stories.\n* System Design\n\t* design a platform for amazon employees to watch training videos, similar to design YouTube\n\t* I learn most of the system design principles from my past work experience. I just watched youtube videos to know the format and brushed up my knowledge.\n* Coding:\n\t* [word search](https://leetcode.com/problems/word-search/description/)\n\t\t* I started with BFS, figured out along the way that DFS was better but interviewer said to just keep doing BFS\n\t\t* Discussed how I would implement DFS but did not actually write the code\n\t\t* Couldn\'t figure out the exact time and space complexity but did talk through the general idea of what was happening in my algorithm and the interviewer seemed to be satisfied\n\t* Given a file containing hourly and monthly employee salary (wage, employee_id, manager_id) calculate the total compensation by manager id\n\t\t* Talked about how to access data, using hashmap to aggregate employee by manager_id, caching result, how it would fit in memory etc.\n\t\t* Interview asked follow up question about how I would implement this in production. I suggested using RDMBS with caching layer and batch job to update/aggregate the salary data.\n\t* Calculate K-most popular items in a stream. (event_id, item_id, timestamp) \n\t\t* At first, I thought it was similar to [top-k-frequent-elements](https://leetcode.com/problems/top-k-frequent-elements/description/) but the new data keeps coming so heap isn\'t very efficient. I did implement it with hashmap counter and heap at first but found a problem when item already in the heap is added and need to rebuild the heap. Ended up just using an array and sort on every new event.\n\t\t* Follow up question: what if we have a sliding window for events in the last X hours only. Didn\'t have time to implement the follow up question but talked about how I would use a queue to keep track of events in the current window.\n\t\t* Overall, I couldn\'t come up with an optimal solution but the interviewer was satisfied with how I talked through my reasoning and why I chose each data structure\n\t\t* Might be similar to [LFU cache](https://leetcode.com/problems/lfu-cache/description/)\n\n\n**July 29th**: offer given

Amazon | SDE2 | Seattle | 2024 [Accepted]

Online Assessment:\n2 coding questions + a work style assessment \n\nPhone Screen (1 Hour):\n2 leadership principle (LP) questions \n1. #295. Find Median from Data Stream\n2. Implement Heap Push\n3. DS Q&A for heaps\n\nVirtual Onsite (4 rounds):\nRound 1:\n\n2 leadership principle (LP) questions\n#102. Binary Tree Level Order Traversal\nFollow up: #103 - Binary Tree Zigzag Level Order Traversal\n\nRound 2:\n\n2 LP Questions\nLow level design\nDesign OOD Pizza Store\nWrite program to calculate price. \n-base, - size, - toppings\nThat was it. had to be creative and write efficient object oriented code.\n\nRound 3:\n\n2 LP questions \n#695. Max Area of Island\nFollow up - #827. Making A Large Island\nWanted few test cases for #827 too\n\nRound 4:\n\n2 LP questions \nSystem Design - Parking Lot. Design API\'s; Database schema\'s\n\n\nPassed all technical questions.\nFeedback was they wanted more complicated past experience answers for the LP questions instead. \n\nGood Luck with them!

Amazon | SDE2 | Seattle | Sep '24  | Reject

Current Experience: 2.2 years\nCurrent company: Microsoft\ncurrent TC: 20L base + 10L stocks/year\n\n**How I applied**: Applied via referral\n\n**Phone screen:**\nInterviewer joined the call and pasted the problem statement without any introduction:\n\nDevelop a feature to determine if an ad has had X impressions without a click over a Y day rolling window.\n\nAn add event can contain will look like as follow:\n\n```\n{\nid: int,\ntimestamp: int,\neventType: click | impression\n}\n```\n\nSample test case:\nx = 3, y = 3\n\ntimestamp: 100, id: 1, type: impression\ntimestamp: 101, id: 1, type: impression\ntimestamp: 102, id: 1, type: click\ntimestamp: 104, id: 1, type: impression\ntimestamp: 106, id: 1, type: impression\ntimestamp: 107, id: 1, type: impression\ntimestamp: 109, id: 1, type: click\n\nThe impression events need to be counted between two click events. \nSo, in the above sample for ad event id - 1\nat timestamp 102, impression count in last y mins = 2\nat timestamp 106, impression count in last y mins = 2\nat timestamp 107, impression count in last y mins = 2\nat timestamp 109, impression count in last y mins = 1\nmaxImpressionCount = 2, which is less than 3 so answer is false for this case.\n\nMy solution:\n```\n// {id, timestamp, type}\n// vector<int>& ad1 = {1, 1001, 1} // 1->for click, 0->for impression\n\nbool cmp(std::vector<int>& ad1, vector<int>& ad2) {\n    return ad1[1] < ad2[1];\n}\n\nbool getAdWithXImpressions(vector<vector<int>> ads, int x, int y) {\n  sort(ads.begin(), ads.end(), cmp);\n  queue<vector<int>> q;\n  map<int, int> impressions; // adEvent id -> number of impressions\n  for (vector<int>& adEvent: ads) {\n    if (adEvent[2]) {\n      int mxImpressionCnt = 0;\n      for (auto it = impressions.begin(); it!=impressions.end();it++) {\n        mxImpressionCnt = max(mxImpressionCnt, it->second);\n      }\n      \n      if (mxImpressionCnt >= x) {\n        return true;\n      }\n      \n      impressions[adEvent[0]] = 0;\n    } else {\n      if (q.empty()) {\n        q.push(adEvent);\n        impressions[adEvent[0]]++;\n      } else {\n        vector<int> firstEvent = q.front();\n          while (adEvent[1] - firstEvent[1] > y) {\n            q.pop();\n            impressions[firstEvent[0]]--;\n            if (impressions[firstEvent[0]] == 0) {\n              impressions.erase(firstEvent[0]);\n            }\n            if (q.empty()) {\n              break;\n            }\n            firstEvent = q.front();\n          }\n          int mxImpressionCnt = 0;\n          for (auto it = impressions.begin(); it!=impressions.end();it++) {\n            mxImpressionCnt = max(mxImpressionCnt, it->second);\n          }\n          if (mxImpressionCnt >= x) {\n            return true;\n          }\n          q.push(adEvent);\n          impressions[adEvent[0]]++;\n      }\n    }\n  }\n  \n  int mxImpressionCnt = 0;\n  for (auto it = impressions.begin(); it!=impressions.end();it++) {\n    mxImpressionCnt = max(mxImpressionCnt, it->second);\n  }\n  if (mxImpressionCnt >= x) {\n    return true;\n  } \n  return false;\n}\n\n```\n\nThe problem statement was kept vague and I got clarity on what is to be done after asking clarifying questions. I had used a priority queue solution, and it worked perfectly on test cases that the interviewer tried on.\n\nGot positive feedback in this round, so next set of rounds (DSA and LLD) were scheduled.\n\n**Round 1: DSA**\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/squares-of-a-sorted-array/\nI coded the optimal solution. \n\nFollow-up 1: Then there was another variant of this problem as a follow-up, I was able to explain my approach but did a small mistake in implementation which I only identified while dry running the code.\n\nFollow-up 2: How do I get the kth smallest element given the same input as the original problem.\nI gave an O(k) solution but the interviewer was looking for O(logk) solution. Could not think of the O(logk) solution as very little time was left.\n\n**Round 2: LLD**\nDesign BookMyShow. It was a toned down version of this famous problem with user scenarios and expections very clearly from the interviewer.\n\nI was able to code the solution in Java, faced some issue during compilation but was able to solve it and demoed the code on happy path and other paths too. \n\nAs the requirements were pretty clear, I had to ask less clarifying questions and could jump to coding directly, but this thing bite me back.\n\n**Verdict**: Rejected\nFeedback:\n- In DSA round, the feedback points to an edge case I missed (which I only identified while dry running the code before handing over to interviewer).\n- In LLD round, the interviwer feedback was on my code quality and clarifying questions.\n\nIn hindsight, my LLD was not up to the mark. Gotta keep practicing :)\n

Uber | SDE 2 | Blr | Rejected | August 2024

I want to share my **Microsoft Software Engineer Intern 2025** interview experience with you!\nThe process was both challenging and insightful, consisting of the following stages:\n**1.** \uD835\uDDE5\uD835\uDDF2\uD835\uDE00\uD835\uDE02\uD835\uDDFA\uD835\uDDF2 \uD835\uDDE6\uD835\uDDF2\uD835\uDDF9\uD835\uDDF2\uD835\uDDF0\uD835\uDE01\uD835\uDDF6\uD835\uDDFC\uD835\uDDFB: My resume was shortlisted from a highly competitive pool of candidates, which was a proud moment for me.\n**2.** \uD835\uDDE2\uD835\uDDFB\uD835\uDDF9\uD835\uDDF6\uD835\uDDFB\uD835\uDDF2 \uD835\uDDD4\uD835\uDE00\uD835\uDE00\uD835\uDDF2\uD835\uDE00\uD835\uDE00\uD835\uDDFA\uD835\uDDF2\uD835\uDDFB\uD835\uDE01 **(2 hours):** After resume shortlisting, I completed an assessment with two medium-level DSA questions. One focused on strings, and the other on recursion and backtracking.\n**3.** \uD835\uDFED\uD835\uDE00\uD835\uDE01 \uD835\uDDE7\uD835\uDDF2\uD835\uDDF0\uD835\uDDF5\uD835\uDDFB\uD835\uDDF6\uD835\uDDF0\uD835\uDDEE\uD835\uDDF9 \uD835\uDDE5\uD835\uDDFC\uD835\uDE02\uD835\uDDFB\uD835\uDDF1 **(45 mins):** I was challenged with three medium-level DSA problems. I solved all the problems and provided the optimal solution. It was a rewarding experience that pushed my problem-solving skills.\n**4. 2nd HLD + Development + Technical + HR Round (45 mins):** In this round, my ability to quickly learn and apply new concepts was tested by presenting me with an unfamiliar topic. I had to research the topic, understand it thoroughly, and provide a high-level design (HLD) along with an explanation of the development process and code implementation. In addition to this, I was asked some technical questions and also HR-based and situational questions, which evaluated my interpersonal skills and approach to problem-solving.\n\n**Result:** ![image](https://assets.leetcode.com/users/images/252d7be2-1513-4b8e-ac16-aa0dadc8cb97_1727817931.7109513.jpeg)\n\nI was thrilled to be offered the Microsoft Software Engineer Intern 2025 position. It was a validation of the hard work I had put into sharpening my skills. The entire process was a learning experience, and I am excited about the opportunity to work with such a prestigious company. I\u2019m eager to contribute to **@Microsoft** and further enhance my skills while working on cutting-edge projects.\n\n\n\n\n**Tips and Advice:**\n\n* **Work on Good Projects:** Focus on building projects that showcase your understanding of trending technologies. Whether it\'s web development, data science, or system design, make sure your projects demonstrate practical application of skills.\n* **Stay Updated with Trending Technologies:** The tech industry evolves quickly. Stay tuned with the latest technologies like AI, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning. Keeping up with tech trends shows your adaptability and enthusiasm for learning.\n* **Practice DSA and Coding Regularly:** Consistent practice is key. Solve DSA problems daily and try ***Camel Case coding*** to improve efficiency and readability of your code\n* **Maintain Strong Profiles:** Keep your **LinkedIn, GitHub, and LeetCode** profiles updated. A good GitHub repository with well-documented projects, active LinkedIn networking, and consistent performance on coding platforms can help boost your profile visibility.\n* **Consistency is Key:** Whether it\'s coding, contributing to open-source, or being active on LinkedIn, consistency makes a big difference. Showcase your skills regularly and engage with the community to stay relevant.\n

Microsoft | SWE Intern | Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Noida | Sep 2024 [Offer]

Education: CSE grad from a Tier 3 college, 2021 passout\nYOE: 3\nRole: SDE 2 at a product based company\n\n**Online assessment**: This was skipped as I was an ex-amazon employee\n\n**Round 1 (DSA): Strong hire**\n* 2 LP questions (Ownership, Learn and Be Curious)\n* https://leetcode.com/problems/pacific-atlantic-water-flow/description/\n\n**Round 2 (LLD): Weak hire**\n* 2 LP questions (Dive deep, Insist on higher standards)\n* Low level design for a real-time collaborative document editing platform like Google Docs\n\n**Round 3 (Hiring Manager + HLD): Hire**\n* 2 LP questions (Deliver results, Earn trust)\n* System design for Amazon music\n\t* Follow-up: Encoding, uploading pipeline, Artist side user flows\n\n**Round 4 (DSA + Bar raiser): Strong hire**\n* 3 LP questions (Have backbone, Customer obsession, Insist on higher standards)\n* Given a list of IP ranges and their corresponding location. Determine the location of a given IP\n\t* Follow-up: Solve the problem for N queries\n\n---\n\n**Preparation**\n* Every onsite round will evaluate 2 leadership principles. Recruiter told me not to repeat the scenarios across the LPs. So make sure to prepare well for this\n\t* I messed up Uber behavioural interview after cracking all technical rounds. So I prepared well this time\n* I didn\'t extensively practice for DSA rounds. I\'ve made it a routine to solve the daily leetcode problem. I\'ve been doing this since 6+ months, so I\'m never out of touch\n* I read alex-xu system design book about an year ago. I felt my regular day to day work would be enough for HLD round. So I didn\'t prepare for this round\n* Concept and Coding playlist for LLD\n---\n**LC stats**\nTotal - 751\nE, M, H - 206, 426, 119\n\n---\n**Resources**\n* https://www.scarletink.com/p/interviewing-at-amazon-leadership-principles?fbclid=IwAR12GcEP1A9Ye_dj3ZtxJ8ErD_XAE9O2CyXaCwtkfiwlfWYttYAQDKsYzsA\n* https://interviewing.io/guides/amazon-leadership-principles\n* https://passmyinterview.com/amazon-leadership-principles-interview/\n* https://amzn.in/d/ff8mGPA\n* https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/in-a-hurry/introduction

Amazon | SDE 2 | Bangalore, India | Sep'24 [Offer]

### Round 1\n- [**2265. Count Nodes Equal to Average of Subtree**](https://leetcode.com/problems/count-nodes-equal-to-average-of-subtree/description/)\n- [**300. Longest Increasing Subsequence**](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-increasing-subsequence/description/)\n\n### Round 2\n- Good amount of discussion about my current projects, limitation, architecture and challenges.\n- Design A Tiktok Messaging Online/Offline Status Provider\n\t- The moment you come online all of **your friends** should see your updated status\n\t- The moment you come online all of **your best friends** should receive a push notification if they are online as well\n\t- If customer goes offline or idle for X mins, the status should be updated to offline.\n\n\nThe feedback I recieved was my current experience doesn\'t include very high scale system(Current project had around 50 Peak TPS, the current team works at Millions TPS scale). However recruiter was really helpful and very patiently gave me good feedback.

Tiktok Singapore | SSE |  Rejected

I am sharing my recent Coinbase interview experience for the Senior SDE (SDE3) position.\n\n**Online Assessment:**\n1. 1 coding question with 4 parts on codesignal in 90 mins. At least 3 parts need to be solved to qualify.\n\tPart 1: Create an in-memory data store with get. set, delete & update functions.\n\tPart 2: Add scan keys and scan keys with prefix functions.\n\tPart 3: Add the set with ttl and update it with ttl functions.\n\tPart 4: Add undo and redo functions.\n\t\n2. Behavioural + logical reasoning assessment (20 mins each).\n\n**Virtual Onsite (4 rounds):**\n**Round 1:**\n* 1 coding question with multiple parts of 1 hour. I solved 4 parts with working code and passed all test cases.\n* Communication is also judged. \n* Part 1: Design and code an interleaving iterator. Given 2 arrays output the elements in interleaving order.\n\t`array1 = [1,2,3] and array2 = [4,5,6] -> result = [1,4,2,5,3,6]`\n* Part 2: Design a range-based iterator with a given start, end and step value.\n\t`(1, 10, 2) -> [1,3,5,7,9]`\n* Part 3: Design interleaving iterator with a list of iterators\n* Part 4: Add a filter function to interleaving iterators\n\t\n**Round 2:**\n* 1 coding question with multiple parts of 1 hour. I solved 3 parts with working code and passed all test cases.\n* Communication is also judged. \n* Part 1: You\'re given a list of values of object property. \n\t* Example: The object is a tree.\n\t* Length:[ Short, medium, tall]\n\t* Leaf colour: [Green, yellow, red] \n\t* Like this, you have multiple properties.\n\t* Now create a list of random objects by randomly selecting each property\'s value.\n* Part 2: Generate unique objects in part 1.\n* Part 3: Add a rarity option to the properties. For example, if the \'Tall\' property is \'rare\' then there should be only a few tall trees when you create random trees in part 2.\n\t\n**Round 3:**\n* High-level system design of of stock broker showing live prices of assests in 1 hour.\n* Communication is also judged. \n\t\n**Round 4:**\n* HM round of 1 hour. Discussion on work experience. Discussion about the role in coinbase.\n* Bonus points for leadership experience. Communication is also judged.\n\nOffer details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5836495/Coinbase-or-Senior-SDE-or-Remote-(India)

Coinbase | SDE3 | Remote(India) | Sep '24 | [Offer]

I wanted to share my recent Amazon interview loop experience for an SDE2 position.\n\n### Online Assessment:\n- 2 coding questions + a work style assessment (pretty sure i might\'ve only got like half the test cases to past for both questions :|)\n\n### Virtual Onsite (4 rounds):\n\n**Round 1:**\n- 2 leadership principle (LP) questions (Deliver Results, Learn and Be Curious)\n- LCA of Binary Tree III ([Problem Link](https://leetcode.com/problems/lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree-iii/))\n\n**Round 2:**\n- 2 LP questions (Earn Trust, Disagree and Commit)\n- System design for Amazon warehouses to prioritize truck deliveries\n\n**Round 3:**\n- 2 LP questions (Dive Deep, Invent and Simplify)\n- Implement 2 APIs: one to track user visits, the other to return the first user to visit only once. Follow-up: return the first N users who visited only once.\n\n**Round 4:**\n- 3 LP questions (Ownership, Customer Obsession, Deliver Results)\n- Implement an unbounded set with expiration.\n\n---\n\n### Experience:\n\nThe first two rounds were pretty iffy. In Round 1, I got stuck on the LCA problem, confusing it with a different solution. The interviewer helped me, but it took time, and I was sure I failed the question. However, I *think* my answers to the LP questions helped balance the overall performance.\n\nThe system design in Round 2 also tripped me up. I expected a large-scale system but later realized the problem required handling only about 1k orders per day. After asking clarifying questions, I pieced together a design using a "top k" prioritization approach. Apart from the "top k" portion I felt like I just slapped on some other boxes a few DBs and some arrows. At this point, I felt like I was 0/2.\n\nFortunately, things improved in the last two rounds. For the API design in Round 3, I initially considered an ordered data structure, but the interviewer hinted at an O(1) solution. I managed to implement the code with minor help on the Remove method for the doubly linked list, making this round much smoother. My solution ended up being comprised of a Doubly Linked List + HashMap.\n\nIn Round 4, the interview went 20 minutes over. Instead of 2 LP questions, I got 3. The problem for the unbounded expiring set was open-ended, and after clarifying the requirements, I designed a solution similar to a thread-safe cache with an expiration background process.\n\nOverall, I was surprised to get an offer, given how I felt about my first two technical rounds. Amazon doesn\u2019t provide feedback, but I *believe* my LP answers helped offset my weaker technical performance. Also, apart from the first DSA round, the other questions felt more practical, though DSA knowledge still helped. Hopefully, this helps anyone preparing for an Amazon interview\u2014good luck!\n\n

Amazon | SDE2 | Bellevue | Sep '24 [Offer]

**MY BACKGROUND:**\n\n**Education**: Bachelors from Tier - 1\n**Year of Graduation**: 2023\n\nA recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn.\nI have 1.3 years of experience and am currently working at a fintech giant.\n\n\n**Round 1: HackerRank Test**\n\nHackerRank Online Assessment - 90 minutes, 2 DSA questions to solve. \nI was able to completely solve both in 10-15 minutes.\n(I don\'t remember the exact questions because it was a while back, but one was a LeetCode medium, and the other was a LeetCode easy-level question.)\n\nAfter this round recruiter told me that I  had cleared this OA, and scheduled a **Coderpad** round for 1 hour , mentioning it would be a DSA round.\n\n**Round 2: CoderPad Virtual**\n\nIn this round, I was given two problems to solve, both of which I fully solved. The interviewer then asked me to write corner cases. In the end, the interviewer was satisfied with my approach and solution.\n(Again, I don\u2019t remember the exact questions, but one was based on DP and was a LeetCode hard-level question, while the other was LeetCode medium-level.)\n\nI received a call 3-4 days later from the recruiter, who informed me that I would be moving forward to the Super Day rounds. This consisted of 3 interview rounds in a single day, all of which were elimination rounds, with each lasting 1 hour.\n\n**Super Day**\n\n**Round 3: Data Structures**\n\nQ1 - [**Maximal Square**](https://leetcode.com/problems/maximal-square/description//)\nQ2 - [**Ugly Number II**](https://leetcode.com/problems/ugly-number-ii/description/?envType=problem-list-v2&envId=50w545lj)\n\nAfter explaining my approach, I had to write working code for both questions. The interviewer asked me to handle edge cases and run my code on those as well.\n\n\n**Round-4: Software Design and Architecture**\n\nThis round was supposed to be a system design round, but they started with one DSA question: [**Kth Largest Element in an Array**](https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array/description/)\n\nThey only asked me for the approach (no coding required), and I figured out the optimal solution using a min-heap. They also asked about time complexity (TC) and space complexity (SC).\n\nThen, I was asked to create classes for an e-commerce website, as well as questions about the APIs and the database schema. After that, they asked few more questions about threading, locks, and race conditions. \n\n\n**Round-5: Software Engineering Practices & Resume Grind**\n\nIn this round, they asked about my current project, its working, and its architecture. Since my current tech stack includes Golang, they asked questions on Go routines, mutex locks, semaphores, and other Go core concepts.\n\nThey also discussed the SDLC process and how i am using this process in my current comapny. ( Questions on releases, vulnerability fixes, etc.)\n\nAfterward, I got a call from HR, who informed me that I had cleared all the Super Day rounds and that one more round with the hiring manager was needed.\n\n**Round-6: Hiring Manager Round**\n\nThis round started with introductions, followed by the manager explaining the work they were doing at GS, the tech stack, and what I will be working on. The conversation ended on a positive note after about 30 minutes.\n\nI was informed after 1.5 weeks that I was selected. The entire process took around 1.5 months to get the offer letter.\n\nCompensation Offered: [**Goldman Sachs | Software Engineer (Analyst) | Bangalore**](https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5773210/Goldman-Sachs-or-Software-Engineer-(Analyst)-or-Bangalore)\n\nHope it helps, Please upvote if it did!\n

Goldman Sachs | Software Engineer Analyst | Offer

I had a screening round and was asked this question:\n```\nGiven an undirected acyclic graph with all of the vertices \nhaving at most 3 neighbors. \nEvery vertex is colored either \nin red or black or white. \nPlease find a root vertex so that:\n\n1. It will form a valid binary tree.\n2. Vertices with the same depth are colored with the same color.\n3. Color should be changing \nin R->W->B->R->W->B order as depth increases. \nPlease note that R->B->W->R->B->W is not allowed. \n(root can be any color, \nso it can be R->W->B->\u2026 or W->B->R->\u2026 \nor B->R->W->\u2026 starting from root)\n\n\nReturn -1 if we can\u2019t find such a vertex.\n```\n\nMy Approach : Approach was start from any node do simple bfs, at each step I will validate whether it\'s neighbour can be a child [max two count ]or parent based on given color order. If it is not following simply return -1 else will mark parent of each node based on color order in an array initially initialized as -1 for all. At last ,the one which has it\'s parent as -1 will be my rootIndex. \nTime Complexity : O(N).\n\nCould not complete the code as Interviewer was not satisfied with Input structure used for graph reperesentation.\n\nCan Someone share working code with proper data structure for graph reperesentation.

Google | L4 | Phone Screen | Rejected

In all rounds there were behavioural questions, all of those related to previous experiences and specific challenging or confronting situations. Mostly could be easily answered preparing for Leadership Principles with the STAR method.\n\nI\'ll just list here the coding and design systems related questions\n\n### Round 1\n- Buy and Sell Stocks\n- Meetings Room\n\n### Round 2\n- Data Stream of a video, expected to find repeated frames of videos within a k range. (sliding window + queue)\n\n### Round 3\n- Given a position of a queen in a mxn board find all posible movements of the queen.\n\n### Round 4\n- Design a Cart System of a Ecommerce Website\n\nAll interviewers expected you to write code similar to production name of variables, perfomance, comments in code, name of functions separating concerns of functions.

Amazon SDE II [Accepted]

Hi,\n\nI was wondering if anyone here has experience interviewing for an E6 role but received an offer for E5 instead?\n\nI will be having an E6 interview for MLE in a few weeks and have been doing mock interviews with coaches. After my first round of ML system design and behavioral interviews, I received feedback that I am performing at a strong E5 level but not quite at E6 yet.\n\nMy question is, under what circumstances would an E6 offer be downgraded to E5?\n\nI have two rounds of coding, two rounds of ML design, and one behavioral round.\n\nThanks!

Meta | Question about downgrading of E6 offer to E5

Current Status : Currently working in a startup.\nCurrent Position : Sr MTS\nCurrent Experience : 3.6 Y\nEducation : M. Tech (CSE) from NIT\n\nPosition Interviewed For : L4 Backend\n\nApplication : Applied directly on Google carrers in **April End**. \nRecruited reached out after that directly and asked basic details and scheduled mock round and then screening round after given 1 month of preparation till screening round.\n\nI prepared by selecting 200 questions from leetcode asked in google.\n\nThe format for all interviews \n- Technical phone screen (45 minutes):\n   - Algorithm question : \n\t - `Initial Question on BFS`\n\t - `Modified question uses Dijkstra (find min path using obstacles)`\n\n After Lean hire on screening round. I asked for another month before next 4 rounds (3 technical and 1 googlyness on same day)\n- 2nd technical onsite (45 min): \n   - Algorithm question : `Similar to rotten oranges with 2 initial starting points (different disease) and 1 destination point, asked did 2nd type of disease will reach the destination if 1st disease is more powerful and will not let 2nd disease to overcome and 1st disease cannot move forward.`\n -   3rd techical onsite (45 min):\n\t  -   Algorithm question : `Similar to platfrom trains on gfg you are given timings of arrival and departure of employess. For each arrival or departure you have to print the current status of available employees with timings. For example : \n\t\t  -   E1 : (10 : 20), E2(15 : 45), E3 (35 : 70) \n\t\t  -   print :\n\t\t\t\t  -    (10 - 15) -> E1\n\t\t\t\t  -    (15 - 20) -> E1 , E2\n\t\t\t\t  -    (20 - 35) -> E2\n\t\t\t\t  -    (35 - 45) -> E2, E2\n\t\t\t\t  -    (45 - 70) -> E3`\n- 4th technical onsite (45 min):\n\t- Algorithm question : `Find peak in mountain array but the array can contain duplicates` (With duplicates it becomes difficult. I was not able to come up with fully correct code if anyone knows please leave comments)\n\n- 5th round googlyness (45 min)\n\t- General questions about how did you handle challenging time and so on.\n\n\nAfter above round, I got lean hire in 2 round and 1 lean no hire and 1 strong hire in googlyness.\nThe feedback is not so positive so before sending my profile to hiring comittee they did team match. It was great. \n\nAfter sending my profile, they decided to take **1 more coding round (Array question)**. But I totally flunked it.\n\n\nI got rejected.\n\nMy mistakes :-\n- I was not considerate towards interview timing which is 45 mins.\n- I gave them algorithms name but didn\'t discussed the edge cased and my assumptions that it won\'t work for negative cycle and all\n- Speed for thinking optimal approach was bit slow.\n\nPros for me : \n- I started preparing with my job (it was tough but be consistent)\n- Started my journey for preparing again\n- Learned a lot\n\nThe recuriter was awesome and was trying everything in its position to help me out by giving proper feedback and much more so shoutout to him. \nI hope you learn from my mistakes and happy coding and good luck.\n\n

Google | L4 (Backened) | Bangalore or Hyderabad | Aug 2024 [Reject]

**Date:**  August, 2024\n* Round 1 [DSA + CPP]\n\n\t1.  https://leetcode.com/problems/design-add-and-search-words-data-structure/\n\t2.  Polymorphism(static & dyamic). vptr & vtable concept, operator overloading\n\t3.  Question related to memory allocation (Stack & heap). Gave a code & fix the issues in it(related to memory allocation). Use of smart pointer.\n\n* Round 2 [DSA + Design + CPP + Puzzle]\n\t1. Design subscribe feature of youtube(LLD). Classes & their interaction.\n\t2. Angle between minute & hour hand at time 03:15\n\t3.  vptr & vtable concept, virtual destructor & virtual constructor. If they exit, explain\n\t4.  In what cases can we make constructor & desctructor private ? [Tip: Restricting allocation over heap section & stack section]\n\t5.  Question involving Nearest Greater to Right & Nearest Greater to Left.\n\t6.  Given a series of 2D points, how will you determine, where it is a circle ?\n\n* Round 3 [DSA]\n\t1. How does MS-WORD do optimization when you scroll the font ? (Optimization related, just like recyclerview in Android)\n\t2. Given an array of sorted numbers, find closest number.\n\t3. Given an n-array tree & a function setDirty() which marks all its children dirty & parent partial dirty. Return a list of dirty nodes & partial dirty nodes. [Tip: Recusively the parent can also become dirty if its child node have become dirty].\n\n

Adobe | CS2 | Noida | August 2024 [Reject]

I contacted a Meta recruiter last month via LinkedIn, and later we connected over Zoom. The recruiter explained the position and the interview structure in great detail. I have been practicing DSA for a while, so I asked for 3 weeks to schedule the screening. Today was my phone screening round.\n\nInterview was of 45 minutes, questions that were asked:\n\nQues 1: https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-palindrome-ii/description/\nQues 2: https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-vertical-order-traversal/description/\n\n

META | PHONE SCREEN | E4 | London | Sept 2024  | PASSED

Status : Applications Engineer at Oracle . 1.5 years of experience. Applied through referral\nDate : Feb 2021\nLocation : Bangalore\n\nOnline Assessment\nDon\'t remember the questions but they were quite easy and doable\n\nAfter assessment , 3 rounds were scheduled after 2 weeks.\n\nRound - 1 : DSA\n\n- Given a string convert it in balanced string in minimum number of operations Balanced string is one which has equal frequency for each character .\n- Definition of operation : Convert one character of string into any other character\n- Defination of balanced string : Balanced string is string which has equal frequency for each character\n- Eg : AAAB -> can be coverted to AABB in one operation\n- I couldn\'t find anything equivalent on leetcode .\n\nBehavioural questions :\n  - Tell about me a challenging work you did\n  - Tell me about me a time where you solved a problem . How you could have done it better?.\n  - Tell me about what are you currently working on recently and metrics used\n\n\nRound - 2: DSA\n\n- When does out of memory exception occur in java?\n- How do you fine tune a GC ?\n- How do you allocate threads and number to use ?\n- Given a BST and range low and high . Return all nodes within that low and high .\n- Stock buy - sell . maximum profit by doing any number of transactions\n\n\nRound 3: DSA\n\n- https://leetcode.com/problems/partition-array-into-two-arrays-to-minimize-sum-difference/description/\n- Can you tell me about a time where you received a critical feedback ? . What was the outcome ? . How did you manage it ?\n- Can you tell me about a time where you did something without consulting your manager ? .\n- Can you tell me about a time where you worked under strict deadlines ? .\n\n\nRound 4: Bar raiser round\n- We have a gaming scoreboard .\n- Design APIs/methods for provide score dashboard for a game.\n- Feature Requirements:\n\t- #1 Fetch score/player details of current player by Name or Id.\n\t- #2 UpdateOrCreate score of player by Name or Id.\n\t- #3 Fetch player details with highest score\n\t- #4 Fetch leaderboard, dashboard in DES order (score).\n\t- #5 Delete the player\n\n- Assumptions:\n\t - Names are unique (simplification)\n\t - Use Data-structures instead of DB\n\nBehavorial:\n- Can you tell me about a time where you did something outside your area of responsibility ?\n- Can you tell me about a time where learned something new,a new tech stack?\n\n\nStatus: Got the offer a week after last round.

Amazon | SDE-1 | Bangalore | Feb 2021(Offer)

Hello Everybody!\n\nThis is a continuation from my phone screen round (link below). I prepared for additional 3 months for my full loop consisting of 2 DSA, 1 Behavioral, and 3 Product Architecture System Design rounds, with each round lasting 45 minutes.\n\nPhone screen: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/5186378/meta-e6-phone-screen/2414912\n\n**Full loop**\n\n# **Day 1: 2 DSA + 1 Behavioral**\n\n* # **Round 1**\nInterviewer joined the call on time and right away said he\'d provide me 5 mins extra time - I quickly inferred there was going to be a hard question for sure.\n\n**Question 1: Medium** \nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-right-side-view\nInterviewer provided the sample input and output, and given a description of the question in plain text without explicitly spelling out binary tree right side view.\n\nI discussed the recursive dfs solution providing the time O(n) and space O(n) solution. Discussed the trade-off of this solution with iterative approach. Mentioned that recursive solution is short implementation so I\'d go with it. Interview was satisfied. I coded it quickly. Did a dry-run on the input provided by interviewer and re-iterated the time and space complexities.\n\nOnce that\'s finished, Interviewer jumped to the second problem.\n\n**Question 2: Hard**\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/making-a-large-island/\nInterviewer provided a sample example with the problem description.\n\nI re-iterated my understanding and walked through a brute-force solution in which we compute the area when encountering a 0. we repeate the process while traversing the grid. This involves repeated computation. I then provided the optimal solution in which we tag the areas and save them in hashamp so that we can use it efficiently while computing the max area. Provided the time and space complexity. Interviewer was satisfied with this solution. I coded the solution and dry-ran the input given by interviewer.\n\nI finished the round within 35 mins. Interviewer said he was done with the interview. We discussed about work culture at Meta etc for 2~3 mins and then ended the call.\n\n\n* # **Round 2**\nInterviewer joined the call 5 mins late and proceeded to the questions rightaway.\n\n**Question 1: Medium**\nModified version of below\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/find-largest-value-in-each-tree-row\nInstead of largest value, interview asked to find the smallest values in each tree row.\n\nI modified the solution of Q1 in round 1.\nI discussed the recursive dfs solution providing the time O(n) and space O(n) solution. I mentioned that recursive solution is short implementation so I\'d go with it. Interview was satisfied. I coded it quickly. Did a dry-run on the input provided by interviewer and re-iterated the time and space complexities.\n\nFollow up 1: what if there is limited stack space but you have unlimited heap?\nAnswer: Switch to iterative solution. In this case recursive solution suffers badly when the tree is very very large and skewed. The recursive function calls will eat up the stack pretty quickly. Interviewer was satisfied with the explanation\n\nFollow up 2: Let\'s assume that each level of the tree has one famous personality. I\'d call the API getFamousPerson(int level) billion times. How would you modify your algorithm to handle this scenario?\nAnswer: I\'d cache the answer. I\'d run my algotihm and compute the famous personalities at each level once. Then based on the level info in the getFamousPerson() API, I\'d simmply fetch the famous person in O(1) time. Interviewer was satisfied with the explanation.\n\nOnce that\'s finished, Interviewer jumped to the second problem.\n\n**Question 2: Medium**\nGiven a list of k sorted lists, with total n elements. Implement an iterator on this data structure. Basically, I was asked to implement hasNext() and next() methods on the list of list so that next() would always return the next minimum value in the whole dataset.\n\nExample -\n{\n\t{1, 9, 10}\n\t{4, 7}\n\t{2}\n}\n\nEach next() will return - {1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10} - in this order.\n\nI re-iterated my understanding and provided an optimized solution rightaway - the priorityqueue based approach. we store the tuple (index of the list (say i), index j pointing elements within list i). we will have min-heap implementation so the top element is always minimum of the dataset. Something like below -\n\n```\nList<List<Integer>> list;\nPriorityQueue<int[]> pq;\npq = new PriorityQueue<>((a, b) -> list.get(a[0]).get(a[1]) - list.get(b[0]).get(b[1]));\n```\n\nI explained the time complexity O(n log k), while space complexity is O(k). The minheap maintains a size of k. Interviewer was satisfied with this solution. I coded the solution and dry-ran the input given by interviewer.\n\nwe were right on-time with 5 mins remining in the interview. We chatted about work culture at Meta and finished the interview.\n\n* # **Round 3**\nInterviewer joined the call 2~3 mins late and explained that this was going to be a behavioral round to gauge several characteristics etc..\nThe questions were very informal - NOT in the typical "tell me a time..." format that I expected. I was stumped.\nTell me what you discuss in your meetings?\n\nHowever, since I prepared the typical "tell me a time..." questions well, I could form my answers to those informal questions on the spot.\n\nAfter this interview was over, I had mixed feelings. Unlike othe rounds, I thought it did not go well.\n\n# **Day 2: 3 Product Architecture Syetem Design**\n\n* # **Round 4**\nInterviewer joined the call on time and exchanged the initial pleasantries, then proceeded to the question.\n\nyou have to design a simple version of Instagram in which user can upload an image. Assume you have the follow() API already in-place. User can see the feeds of other users he/say follows.\nIt\'s toned down version of Instagram News Feed. I prepared Facebook NewsFeed well before.\nI re-iterated my understanding and proceeded with Functional, Non-Functional, Core Entities, APIs, HLD, Deep Dive.\nI drove the whole interview at ease, going really deep in 2 places during my deep dive - uploading the images directly to bloblstore, feed generation. I provided the justification and trade-offs during my decision making.\nI felt really happy after this round, with my confidence really high up.\n\n* # **Round 5**\nInterviewer joined the call on time and exchanged the initial pleasantries, then proceeded to the question.\n\nyou have to design a simple version of Drpbox with 2 features - share a file and sync feature across multiple devices. Again luck played its part. I prepared dropbox design pretty well.\nI re-iterated my understanding and proceeded with Functional, Non-Functional, Core Entities, APIs, HLD, Deep Dive.\nI drove the whole interview at ease, going really deep in 2 places during my deep dive.\n1. uploading/downloading files directly to/from bloblstore, providing my justification for doing so with some calculation and logical thinking.\n2. clearly explaining sync feature -- remote changed and local changed. How to go about in these two scenarios.\nI felt really happy after this round, with my confidence really high up.\n\nEven thouugh I drove the whole interview, I encountered many many follow-ups during the session. At the end of the interview, the interviewer remarked that it was a pretty good design.\n\n* # **Round 6**\nIt was a round with shadow interviewer i.e. 2 interviewer joined the party. The recruiter previously mentioned that this round would not be evaulated and that this was just for training purpose.\nyou have to design an Auction system - bummer. I did not prepare it at all.\nI reiterated my understanding and proceeded with Functional, Non-Functional, Core Entities, APIs, HLD, Deep Dive.\nI just somehow finished this round.\n\n\nIf I were to rate myself in these 6 rounds, I\'d rate as below -\nRound 1: Strong Hire\nRound 2: Strong Hire\nRound 3: Hire/ Lean Hire\nRound 4: Strong Hire\nRound 5: Strong Hire\nRound 6: No Hire\n\n\nTwo days after going through the rounds, I received the feedback from the recruiter that **I\'d be moving to team matching, congratulations!**\n\nA big shout out to the community. The community really helped me throughout my preparation.\n\nThank you

Meta | E6 | Virtual Onsite | Offer

I got asked the "distance from Dashmarts" graph question that some other posted, but basically it\'s https://leetcode.com/problems/01-matrix/description/\n\nExperience:\n\n I mentioned that we can start the BFS from all the "1"\'s at once, which takes O(MN), and is optimal.\nInterviewer asked me to write down a quick pseudo code before implementing.\nImplemented, compiled and ran the test cases (which were already given by the interviewers). Got compiling error due to a small bug; fixed that immediately, all test cases passed\nAt which point ran out of time. Interviewer said they had a follow up but don\'t worry about that.\n\nRecruiter called in 2 business days said I\'m going to onsite.\n\nI think a few folks mentioned they got the optimal solution and even got the follow up; so I\'m not sure why I got passed. I guess I was lucky. But I think a few points that may have helped me pass even when I didn\'t get to the follow up:\n* I didn\'t give the optimal solution right away. I started with an inefficient solution then (because that\'s the only one I could think of initially) then acklowledged that "that\'s still very inefficient, give me a minute to think of a more efficient way", and eventually arrived at the optimal one.\n* I factored out my code. I don\'t know how much that helped, but I do that in every coding interview I\'ve been to. (factor out things like `getNeighbors` , defined constants like `ONE = "1"` instead of hardcoding "1" into the main code), as they mentioned the code need to be production quality so I think little things like that may count.\n\nI\'m having onsite next week.\n

Doordash Phone Screen | E4 SWE | Passed

Status: 2 YOE\nLocation: USA\nDate: Aug 2024\n\nTechnical Phone Screen (1 Hour):\n1. Check if a linked list is Circular Linked List\n2. Kth Largest Element in an Array\n3. 5-10 mins, Java DSA Questions\n\nOnsite( 3 Rounds):\n\nRound 1 (1 Hour):\n1. kth Smallest Element in an Array\n2. K-way merge algorithm (Algo/TC/SC Discussion only)\n\nRound 2 (1 Hour):\n1. Given Paths (45 mins):\n\t/abc/def/ghi,\n\tjkl/mno/pqr,\n\tstu/vwx/yz\n\t\n\t- Write a method to return all unique directories and files from the list.\n\t- Followup: Return directories and files separately \n\t- Followup: Discussion only for being able to return in hierarchical format (Tree) \n2. System Design: Restaurant Management (15 mins)\n\t- Class Diagrams only\n\t- Scalable Options (LB, Caching)  and theortical questions.\n\n\nHM - Round 3 (1 Hour)\n\nCoding (40 mins)\n1. Merge 2 sorted List\n2. Follow up: Merge k sorted list (Divide and Conquer Algorithm\n\nSystem Design (25 mins) - TinyUrl (Complete) \n\nBehavioural Questions (15 mins)\n\n\nResult: Pass\n\nThis was a challenging interview for me and encourage all readers to do well.\n

Oracle OCI | MTS (IC2) | USA | Aug 2024 [Passed]

Status: 10 YOE\nCompany: Walmart Global Tech\nLocation: Bengaluru\nDate: August, 2024\n\n**1st round (Screening - Karat)**\nSystem Design questions:\n1. Any concerns with Consistent Hashing for multiple servers serving music uploading/streaming service\n2. How would you handle large files that cannot fit in on a single machine\n3. How would you scale your backend if your app is going from a single country to international app\n4. Pros and cons of preloading hints or loading them from server for a game. Hints could be text/image/video based.\n\nDSA:\n1. Given a main word and a list of words, we need to find the word from the list whose anagram is present in a given string. HashMap problem\n2. Find the coordinate of the given word in a n*m grid. Can start from any where and only move right/down\n\n**2nd round (DSA)**\nGiven a stream of events with contentId and its popularity trend (+1/-1) we need to provide the most popular contentId at any given point in O(1)\nVery similar to all oone data structure problem on Leetcode\n\n**3rd round (Machine Coding)**\nRate limiter (Token bucket) Was asked to implement any one strategy\n\n**4th round (High Level design)**\nTag management system: We need to design a tagging system that different systems like Confluence and Jira should be able to use to tag their assets.\n\n**5th round (Management)**\n1. Did you ever put your team ahead of your personal goals?\n2. Did you take any initiative to improve the current system in your team?\n3. Did you ever oppose someone\u2019s technical approach and how?\n4. What was the most challenging task you have faced?\n5. Did you ever convince other teams to align with your thought process?\n\n**6th round (Values)**\n1. Biggest challenge you faced so far in your career?\n2. Did you ever put your team ahead of your personal goals?\n3. Did you face any issues with any teammates performance how did you?resolve it?\n4. Did you ever commit anything and were not able to deliver it on time?\n5. Did you drive any change in the team which ultimately for rejected?\n\nDo not take 5th and 6th rounds lightly, they are as important as the technical rounds especially if it is P50 and above. Go prepared with good amount of examples

Atlassian | Senior Software Engineer | Bengaluru | August [Offer]

Status: 10 YOE\nCompany: Walmart Global Tech\nLocation: Bengaluru\nDate: August, 2024\n\n**1st round (Screening - Karat)**\nSystem Design questions:\n1. Any concerns with Consistent Hashing for multiple servers serving music uploading/streaming service\n2. How would you handle large files that cannot fit in on a single machine\n3. How would you scale your backend if your app is going from a single country to international app\n4. Pros and cons of preloading hints or loading them from server for a game. Hints could be text/image/video based.\n\nDSA:\n1. Given a main word and a list of words, we need to find the word from the list whose anagram is present in a given string. HashMap problem\n2. Find the coordinate of the given word in a n*m grid. Can start from any where and only move right/down\n\n**2nd round (DSA)**\nGiven a stream of events with contentId and its popularity trend (+1/-1) we need to provide the most popular contentId at any given point in O(1)\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/all-oone-data-structure/\n\n**3rd round (Machine Coding)**\nRate limiter (Token bucket) Was asked to implement any one strategy\n\n**4th round (High Level design)**\nTag management system: We need to design a tagging system that different systems like Confluence and Jira should be able to use to tag their assets.\n\n**5th round (Management)**\n1. Did you ever put your team ahead of your personal goals?\n2. Did you take any initiative to improve the current system in your team?\n3. Did you ever oppose someone\u2019s technical approach and how?\n4. What was the most challenging task you have faced?\n5. Did you ever convince other teams to align with your thought process?\n\n**6th round (Values)**\n1. Biggest challenge you faced so far in your career?\n2. Did you ever put your team ahead of your personal goals?\n3. Did you face any issues with any teammates performance how did you?resolve it?\n4. Did you ever commit anything and were not able to deliver it on time?\n5. Did you drive any change in the team which ultimately for rejected?\n\nDo not take 5th and 6th rounds lightly, they are as important as the technical rounds especially if it is P50 and above. Go prepared with good amount of examples

Status: 10 YOE\nCompany: Walmart Global Tech\nLocation: Bengaluru\nDate: August, 2024\n\n**1st round (Screening - Karat)**\nSystem Design questions:\n1. Any concerns with Consistent Hashing for multiple servers serving music uploading/streaming service\n2. How would you handle large files that cannot fit in on a single machine\n3. How would you scale your backend if your app is going from a single country to international app\n4. Pros and cons of preloading hints or loading them from server for a game. Hints could be text/image/video based.\n\nDSA:\n1. Given a main word and a list of words, we need to find the word from the list whose anagram is present in a given string. HashMap problem\n2. Find the coordinate of the given word in a n*m grid. Can start from any where and only move right/down\n\n**2nd round (DSA)**\nGiven a stream of events with contentId and its popularity trend (+1/-1) we need to provide the most popular contentId at any given point in O(1)\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/all-oone-data-structure/\n\n**3rd round (Machine Coding)**\nRate limiter (Token bucket) Was asked to implement any one strategy\n\n**4th round (High Level design)**\nTag management system: We need to design a tagging system that different systems like Confluence and Jira should be able to use to tag their assets.\n\n**5th round (Management)**\n1. Did you ever put your team ahead of your personal goals?\n2. Did you take any initiative to improve the current system in your team?\n3. Did you ever oppose someone\u2019s technical approach and how?\n4. What was the most challenging task you have faced?\n5. Did you ever convince other teams to align with your thought process?\n\n**6th round (Values)**\n1. Biggest challenge you faced so far in your career?\n2. Did you ever put your team ahead of your personal goals?\n3. Did you face any issues with any teammates performance how did you?resolve it?\n4. Did you ever commit anything and were not able to deliver it on time?\n5. Did you drive any change in the team which ultimately for rejected?\n\nDo not take 5th and 6th rounds lightly, they are as important as the technical rounds especially if it is P50 and above. Go prepared with good amount of examples.

Atlassian | Senior Software Engineer | Bengaluru | August [offer]

I wanted to share my recent internship journey,. Here\u2019s how it went:-\nI didn\'t get shortlisted in any exam though i gave around 12-15 exams... amazon was the first company that shortlisted me in the online assessment and I cleared the interview in a single go.\n\n**ONLINE ASSESSMENT (2 questions, 70 minutes):-**\n```\n1. Select prefix of any length from an array and decrement each element in that prefix length by 1. \nMake sure no element becomes negative. Count maximum number of zeros after all possible operations.\n```\nSample case :- [3,2,4,4,1]\nOutput:- 3\nExplaination:- Select prefix of size 5, [3,2,4,4,1] -> [2,1,3,3,0]. Now choose prefix of size 4, [2,1,3,3,0] -> [1,0,2,2,0]. Now we have to choose prefix of size 1 because 1st index will become negative if we try to make further elements smaller... [1,0,2,2,0] -> [0,0,2,2,0].\n\n*Had to do this in time complexity of O(n). Thinking of the optimal solution is bit difficult but luckily I figured it out in the exam.*\n\n```\n2. Given an array of strings and a threshold value count the number of segments which have count \nof vowels less than or equal to the value of the threshold.\n```\nSample case :- ["lciy","ttrd","aod"] , threshold = 1\nOutput:- 3\nExplaination:- Segments with vowel count less than or equal to 1 :- ["lciy"],["lciy","ttrd"],["ttrd"].\nRelatable question:- Find the Number of subarrays having sum less than K using C++ (tutorialspoint website)\n\n*Worked with brute force method with time complexity of O(n^2).*\n\n*I solved both the questions and got shortlisted for the interview.*\n\n**INTERVIEW EXPERIENCE:-**\nBasic introduction then started with DSA questions....\n\n1.  Easy string (gfg question)\nA bit modification in this question...\nModifications :-\ni) String consisted only lowercase letters.\nii) If a character occured more than 9 times then we have to return "9" + "that char" and continue counting again.\nSample case 1:- "aaaaaaaaaaaaaabbeee"\nOutput:-"9a5a2b3e"\n\n\tSample case 2 :- "abcde"\n\tOutput :- "1a1b1c1d1e"\n\n*Got it right in a single go... was pretty simple and straight forward. (O(n) approach).*\n\n2. Check if leaf traversal of two Binary Trees is same? (gfg question)\nExact Same question was asked.\n\n*First I gave a wrong approach of level order traversal then interviewer made me realise its wrong by giving another sample case then i figured out the correct approach and coded it.*\n\nInterviewer was quite impressed with my solutions and said he didnt have any more questions.\nHe asked me if I had any questions for him... Question asked by me:-\n**"What is the definition of a good code according to you sir? When a student writes a code what are the key elements that you look into?"**\n\n*He answered it and then he told me that the recruiting team will update me with the further steps and ended the meet.*\n\n**I GOT HIRED!!**

Amazon SDE II Intern | Coding challenge | Interview experience | August 2024 | [Offer]

Experience: 4 years\nPosition: L4 (Software Engineer-3)\nLocation: Hyderabad, India\nOffer Date: August, 2024\n\n**The Unexpected Opportunity**\n\nIn January of this year, I applied for a position at Google through their careers page without much expectation. Given that I was working in a service-based company and wasn\u2019t even receiving interview calls from average product-based companies, I didn\u2019t anticipate much. But then, in the last week of February, I received an email from a Google recruiter expressing interest in my profile. For a moment, I thought it might be spam. However, after confirming its authenticity, I promptly replied, expressing my interest.\n\n**The First Waiting Game**\n\nAfter my reply, I was left in the dark. I didn\u2019t hear back from the recruiter, and even my attempt to connect with them via LinkedIn went unanswered. Just when I was beginning to lose hope, the recruiter finally called in the last week of March, approximately four weeks later. \n\n**The Initial Screening**\n\nThe recruiter asked about my current work experience and quickly moved on to the crucial question: "How good are you with Data Structures and Algorithms? How would you rate yourself out of 10, and why?" I rated myself 8 out of 10, having solved around 650+ LeetCode questions.\n\nShe then explained the interview process: a phone screening round, followed by four onsite rounds if I cleared the initial screen\u2014three coding rounds and one \u201CGoogleyness\u201D round. She advised me to solve 150-200 medium and hard LeetCode problems in preparation. We scheduled the phone screening for April 28th, which was later rescheduled to May 14th due to personal reasons.\n\n**The First Phone Screen(14 May 2024)**\n\nThe first phone screen was nerve-wracking. After a brief introduction, the interviewer shared a problem in a Google Doc. The problem was one and a half pages long, and I spent about 15 minutes trying to fully understand it. At that point, I started to feel that it might be over for me. But as I continued reading and confirmed some examples I created, I realized it was a topological sorting problem.\n\nI explained my approach, and the interviewer seemed satisfied. I then coded the solution, including the time and space complexity, within 45 minutes. There were no follow-up questions.\n\n**Moving to Onsite**\n\nA week later, after sending a feedback request, the recruiter called to inform me that I had cleared the phone screening round and they wanted to schedule my onsite interviews. I requested some feedback, and she advised me to start with a brute force approach in future interviews before diving into the optimal solution. We agreed to schedule the onsite interviews after I felt confident, which turned out to be in late June.\n\n**Onsite Interviews: Round 1/Coding(July 1st week)**\n\nThe first onsite coding round took place in the first week of July. After a brief introduction, the interviewer shared a problem in Google\u2019s editor, which was easier to code in than Google Docs. The problem seemed like it could be solved using DFS. After asking some clarifying questions, I explained my approach, which the interviewer accepted. I then coded the solution and handled a follow-up question that involved using a PriorityQueue with DFS. The interviewer was satisfied with my approach.\n\n**Onsite Interviews: Round 2/Coding(July 1st week)**\n\nThe second coding round started without any introductions. The interviewer shared the problem directly, and I quickly recognized it as a sliding window problem. I first presented a brute force approach and then explained how it could be optimized using a sliding window. After coding the solution and handling a straightforward follow-up question, I finished within 35 minutes, leaving some time for additional discussion.\n\n**Onsite Interviews: Round 3/Coding(July 1st week)**\n\nThe third coding round also began without any introductions. The problem was a medium-hard level tree DP question. After thinking aloud for a bit, I arrived at the correct solution and coded it. However, the interviewer wanted the code to be more readable, suggesting I avoid using an extra function, which I struggled with. Despite this, I successfully tackled the follow-up question, which involved modifying a binary tree into an n-ary tree.\n\n**Coding Round Feedbacks**\n\nAfter the third coding round, the recruiter informed me that all my coding rounds had gone well and that I just needed to perform well in the Googleyness round. While she couldn\u2019t reveal my exact ratings, she hinted that I had likely received one \u201CStrong Hire\u201D and two \u201CHire\u201D ratings.\n\n**Onsite Interviews: Round 4/Googlyeness and Leadership(July 2nd week)**\n\nFor the Googleyness round, I prepared 10-15 scenarios from my past experiences in the STAR format. The interviewer asked four questions\u2014two hypothetical and two based on my past experiences. The round went smoothly, and we finished within 35 minutes.\n\n**Onsite Rounds Feedback**\n\nAfter a week, the recruiter called with positive feedback from all interviewers and informed me that I was ready for team matching. The first team match call happened the very next day, and within a week, I was matched with two teams. \n\n**The Team Match Process**\n\nDuring the team matching calls, one team casually asked about my projects and explained theirs, while the other team\u2019s manager conducted a deep dive into my projects, asking a lot of cross-questions. From this experience, I\u2019d recommend thoroughly preparing to discuss your past projects in detail.\n\n**The Final Stretch: HC**\n\nAfter the team matching round, I was a bit worried\u2014not about getting rejected, but about the possibility of being down-leveled to L3. I had read stories about this happening to others, so it was on my mind. But, to my relief, I found out the next week that the hiring committee (HC) review was already done before my team matching round, and they decided to move forward with L4.\n\nRecruiter told me that since I didn\u2019t have any borderline feedback, the HC process was quick and smooth, which was a huge relief.\n\n**Final Verdict: Selected (1st week of Aug 2024)**\n\nIt took about two more weeks for my offer packet to be prepared and approved. Finally, after all the preparation and waiting, I received my official Google offer. The whole journey, from applying to getting the offer, was challenging but incredibly rewarding.\n\nCompensation: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5609329/Google-or-SWE3-L4-or-Hyderabad\n\n**Preparation Strategy**\nBefore my first interview call, I had already solved around 650 LeetCode questions. By the time I finished my final round, that number had increased to 850. I used LeetCode Premium and focused on solving about 70% medium and 30% hard questions, primarily using the company and frequency tabs to guide my practice.\n\nDuring my preparation, I also created a Google Doc where I stored code snippets and noted the time complexities of important concepts. I used ChatGPT to help me find the simplest and most efficient code for common algorithms like DFS, topological sorting, and sliding window, etc. I saved these snippets in my document for easy revision.\n\nWhile I ended up solving a lot of questions, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessary to solve 900 questions. The key is to focus on solving a variety of questions that cover different patterns. \nI recommend focusing more on medium-level questions, as the difficulty of the problems I encountered in my interviews was similar to the 3rd question in most LeetCode contests.\n\nAll the best for your preparation!!!

Google | SWE-3/L4 | Hyderabad | Aug 2024 | [Offer]

Hey all, I learned a lot during past 2 months from the community, now it is the time to give back. This is my very first coding interview. So I guess my experience would be particularly useful for beginners.\n\n**Background**\nYOE: 7 years MLE\nLeetCode stats: almost no experience at all 2 months ago. Have never done coding interview before. \nI was reached out by HR and scheduled a phone interview, and started grinding the 150 tag questions.\n\n**Approach to Prepare**\n*Coding*\nI have **never** grinded LeetCode before. From the day 1 of reaching out, I tackled the following before the phone screen. \n1. NeetCode\'s roadmap\n2. top 150 tag questions\n3. Past 6 months of questions found in LeetCode discussion in the interview.\n\n*ML System Design*\n1. Machine Learning System Design Interview by Ali Aminian and Alex Xu, I read through the whole book twice. \n2. Prepared the ML knowledge using ChatGPT. (You can simply ask please come up with a list of interview questions regarding a topic). I found this way very useful to deepen my understanding.\n\n*Behavioral*\nSearched for common behavior questions, and prepared a concrete answer in advance.\n\n**Interview Timeline**\n1. Reached out by HR in mid June\n2. Phone Screen in mid July, got the pass email the second day.\n3. Onsite in mid August, got the pass call after 5 business days.\n\n**Phone Interview**\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-vertical-order-traversal/description/\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-remove-to-make-valid-parentheses/description/\n\nNo variation. But the interviewer pointed out that my answer to the second question was not optimal during the interview. Luckily I figured out how to solve it optimally during the interview. Solved both within 40 mins.\n\n**Coding Interview 1:**\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/sum-root-to-leaf-numbers/ Small variation, it is the sum of the node values, no need to multiply by 10. Solved optimally within 10 mins, provided TC and SC.\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/meeting-rooms-ii/ Small variation, instead of return the max meeting room number, return any timestamp that has the maximum overlap. I needed a small hint to realize this is the meeting rooms problem, and had a small struggle on returning my timestamp, instead of overlap number. Eventually my solution works but it is a bit ugly. Solved the question in ~ 30 mins, provided TC correclty.\n\n**Coding Interview 2:**\n1. That flight departure and arrive, and returning the minimum cost problem, discussion before https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/4948676/Meta-or-MLE-or-USA-or-Phone-Screen Solved it optimally within 5 mins, felt worth it of spending hours of digging the problems in discussion.\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-path-in-binary-matrix/description/ Solved it optimally within 15 mins. The interviewer was pretty satisfied we only used 20 mins to solve two questions. \n\nThe interviewer asked a follow-up question on this of weighted matrix (meaning each step you travel has a weight, the weight is the value of the matrix). I didn\'t realize I can still use BFS + Heap to sovle the problem. Instead, I coded up a solution using DP. It seems that my solution has some corner cases not covered. But I think the back and forth discussion went pretty well, I was able to explain my intuition and solution clearly. In the end, I am pretty relaxed and felt like a discussion with a teammate, instead of an interview.\n\n**ML System Design**\nSomething like harmful content detection, I followed the structure but not exactly the answer by the book. We covered all the components and stretch questions within 40 mins. I think it is important **to be flexible**, be ready to jump into the particular question that the interviewer is interested in if needed, and jump out to the larger picture when needed. BTW, we didn\'t use the whiteboard tool at all, the interviewer was totally OK with it. \n\n**Behavioral**\nI was asked about 6-7 questions in total. Luckily all the questions are prepared, and the interviewer also digged into details. The interviewer ran out of question after 40 mins. :)\n\n**Notes:**\n1. **Use CoderPad to practice**. Write down the intuition of the solution first (preferrably with a test example) before start coding. In my first question of Phone Screen, I wrote down "class Solution" by habit, but was interrupted by the interview to first explain my thoughts thorougly.\n2. If you are also a beginner, don\'t feel bad if you can\'t solve a new problem on your own. I usually search if NeetCode has a solution. If not, I\'ll check Editorial. You can also ask ChatGPT to explain the code for you.\n3. For Meta, the **coding speed and optimal solutions** are important, so make sure your answer is optimal. It is very stressful to find out that your prepared solution is not the optimal during the interview. You can ask ChatGPT to optimize your code. \n4. Luck plays a role in the interview. Try your best and leave the rest to your luck. Good Luck!\n

Meta | E5 | MLE | Passed | Menlo Park

###### YOE 6+\n###### Exp: Worked with a US based startup (acquired by an MNC later)\n###### Currently Laid off from last org.\n###### Started focused preparation in May 2024\n\n\nAfter many referrals, recruiter finally contacted me for a L62 position. This followed elaborate rounds of interviews over a span of two weeks.\n\n**Round-1:** Duration: 60mins | DSA + LLD\n\nStarted with brief introduction followed by a small discussion on previous work.\nThis was followed by a DSA question on Graph. It was a levelled-up Course Schedule-2 problem - https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule-ii/\nApproach I followed was Topological Sort using DFS.\n\nThis was followed by a discussion on how would I approach a problem similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/meeting-rooms-ii/ - Only the approach was asked, which was followed by a LLD on what kind of class structure and DB structure would I use. This was more conversational in nature with the interviewer.\n\n*Self-assessment:*  Strong Yes\n\n\n**Round-2:** Duration: 1hr 15min | DSA + LLD\n\nDSA question:\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/insert-delete-getrandom-o1/description/\n\nLLD question: \n\nDesign a terminal based prompt for creation/updation of files and directories. Basically design to support mkdir, cd and touch commands.\n\n```\nMy approach:\n\nFile class representing File/Folder\nDriver class to drive commands\n\nChallenge was to handle folder names with absolute, relative and paths starting with ~.\nI took the Chain of Responsibility approach for this.\n```\n\n*Self-assessment:* Strong Yes\n\n\n**Round-3:** Duration: 1hr 15mins | LLD + HLD \n\nBuild a windows search functionality with following requirements\n\nRequirements:\n1. search based on a string pattern\n    - result of pattern matching against all file. Folder names and file contents(if they are text based)\n2. Ordering should be based on any heuritstic logic.\n\nFor LLD, the focus was on class design and search logic. Following was the gist of things I mentioned\n\n```\nclass Driver:\n- search("searchTerm"):\n    return Index.searchIndex("searchTerm")\n- handleAFile():\n    FileSystem.handle()\n\nclass FileSystem:\n- handling the creation/ updation and deletion of File \n- createAFile(docName, text):\n    - Index.updateOrBuildindex(document)\n- updateAFile\n- deleteAFile\n\nclass File:\n- path\n- content\n\nclass Index:\n- invertedIndex:\n{\n    "search_term" : [File, Position(-1 in case of folder name), frequency] \n}\n\n- searchIndex("term"):\n    return map[term]\n\n- updateOrBuildindex():\n\n```\n\nThis was followed by HLD discussion of the same requirement. I discussed the following\n\n```\nDiscussed about:\n\nBuilding an Inverted index\nUpdating the index via a daemon process asynchronously in the background based on creation/updation/deletion of folders/files.\nSearch the above built index.\n```\n\n\nSelf-assessment: Average/Below-average ( I was not able to justify my approach in HLD properly, and interviewer seemed not satisfied)\n\n\n**Round-4:**  Duration: 1hr 30mins | LLD + HLD\n\nDiscussion about LRU cache and LFU cache - Code was not expected, but the approach was expected, so the discussion surrounded around data structures I use. I previously solved LRU, so was comfortable with that, but never solved LFU previously, so took many iterations to reach an acceptable solution. \n\nThis was followed by a short discussion on LLD of the same. Interviewer wax expecting me to come up with an Abstract class by taking out the common elements of both.\n\nHLD question: \nUsecase similar to Unicommerce.\nDesign a notification system so that a seller in Amazon gets notified whenever the price of the same product is changed by the competitors in Flipkart. Assume there is no API provided by Flipkart.\n\n\n```\nMy Approach:\nDiscussed about Scraping as an approach to capture prices of products (/small discussion about robots.txt etc)\nSimple SQL DB design to store prices of products for each competitors. And when latest scraped data doesnt match with existing, create a notification and send it to notification engine\n```\n\nThe discssion was more about what\'s the best DB design for the same, I was inclined towards storing the price against each seller, but interviewer was inclined more towards not storing any seller information as it is dicated by a third party, rather simply store prices of all sellers in a simple List format. It was a healthy discussion and in the end we came to an agreement.\n\n*Self-assessment:* Strong Hire\n\n\n**Round-5**: Duration: 30mins | HM round with simple HLD \n\nFirst 15 minutes I was given chance to ask any questions I have, after he answered all of them, the HLD question was how to design a distributed logging system. The answer he was looking for was that logs need to be handled asychronously.\n\n*Self-assessment:* Hire \n\nNote on my observations:\nAll the interviewers were very friendly and are more focused on the approach and thought process than the actual solution.\n\n\n**My preparation strategy:**\n\n**For DSA:**\nI code in Python, I have followed two main resources:\n\n1. Neetcode 150 list - only for the list of questions. Try to cover questions from all topics parallely, rather than going sequentially.\n2. Greg Hogg python solutions, Greg has a unique approach to most questions and I liked those.\nI also purchased LC premium, for some questions Editorials really helped.\n\nStrategy: \nRevision is crucial before a DSA interview, the two pronged approach I followed was to document all my LC solutions in a github repo, which stands as my wiki. Then I maintained a shorter notes where I made notes for approaches that I tend to forget or are complex or are something new that I have recently learnt.\n\n**For LLD:**\nBasics are very important, OOPS concepts, SOLID principles etc.\nGood resource I followed for Design patterns in python - Design patterns from Python wife website\nI always kept a printed version of the cheat sheet for design patterns handy.\n\n\n\n**For HLD:**\nIt\'s crucial to get the basics right when it comes to HLD. \n\nResources:\n1. For basics on Databases - Deep Dive into the Internals of the Database course on educative.\n2. For System design questions - Grokking Modern System Design Interview for Engineers & Managers on educative.\n3. Jordan has no life YT channel - his playlist also covers comparision of design and DB choices\n\nI have made a comprehensive notes from all three above resources. And since then my notes stood as my revision material. My suggestion is to dedicate a week or two for HLD, prepare your notes, dont touch the resources again as they are extensive and you cant revise easily. Revision is the key before any HLD interview.\n\n\nIt\'s easy to get distracted and deviated in this job market. Stay positive, focused and work on your weakness, as the interviewer doesnt leave any scope for mistake. All the best!\n\nLeetcode community has helped me a lot and it\'s my time to give back. Hope this post helps. \n

Microsoft | L62 | Hyderabad | Jul 2024 [Offer]

Status: 3 YOE, CS from Tier 1\\1.5\nPosition: SDE II at seed-stage start-up\nLocation: Bangalore\nDate: July, 2024\n\n### Interview\n\nOA. If cut-off score met, a TPS is scheduled. If that is cleared, four on-site interviews - DSA, LLD, HLD, and HM. \n\n**Online Assessment**\n\nQuestion: 3 questions. All LeetCode Easy to Medium.\n\nPerformance; Solved all of them with all tests cases\n\n**Technical Phone Screen**\n\nQuestion: Given a size N array, for every K sized rolling window in the array, find the minimum absolute difference between any two elements in the K sized window. \n\nPerformance: Implemented a working solution with time complexity O(NKlogK), however the expectation was to do better and provide a solution with time complexity O(NlogK). Idea behind the optimal solution is to do a one-time construction of K sized sorted set of the first window and a K - 1 sized sorted set of the difference between the sorted elements of the first window in time complexity O(KlogK). Iteration through the array (removal of the first window element, addition of the next element, and computation of the minimum absolute diff of the window) can be performed in O(logK) each, leading to an overall complexity of O(NlogK + KlogK) = O(NlogK)\n\nSince I wasn\'t able to implement or even clearly discuss the optimal solution, wasn\'t expecting an onsite interview call, but did receive one. \n\n**Onsite DSA**\n\nQuestion 1: Construct an N sized array consisting of elements from 0 to N - 1 given K subsequences of that array. It can be assumed that at least one valid answer always exists. Follow-up: In case of multiple valid solutions, return the one that corresponds to the "lowest" value. (i.e. [0, 1, 2, 3] is lower than [0, 2, 1, 3])\n\nPerformance: Was able to solve both the question and follow-up with optimal time complexity. The first part can be solved by topological sort. The second part requires a minor modification in the topological sort DFS to ensure that the numbers are always traversed in descending order (since topological sort involves a final reversal step of the elements).\n\nQuestion 2: String manipulation. Same as this [post](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/2008790/uber-phone-screen).\n\nPerformace: Implemented working solution. Trie seemed like overkill given the set of elements is limited, and the interviewer seemed to agree, so a simple hash-map based approach was enough. \n\n**LLD**\n\nQuestion: Well defined logging library API with get and set methods. Data was expected to be handled in memory. \n\nPerformance: First implemented functionally complete solution with appropriate design patterns such as singleton and fluent. Then discussed and partially implemented improvements such as concurrency handling with locking and time complexity optimisation.\n\nRan into some strange compilation issues while working on the optimisation and wasn\'t able to fully complete all the requirements discussed, but no major gaps. \n\n**HLD**\n\nQuestion: Don\'t recall the exact problem statement, but it was well-defined. The interviewer copy-pasted a list of requirements rather than verbally discussing a high level problem statement. \n\nPerformance: Since the problem statement was well-defined, the interview was more straightforward than a usual HLD round.\n\n**HM**\n\nSeveral behavioural questions, with cross questioning. Focused a lot on experience managing multiple stakeholders.  \n\n### Compensation\n\n[Compensation Details](https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5656724/Uber-or-SDE-2-or-Bangalore)\n\n### Notes\n\nThe interviews were comprehensive and covered pretty much all standard topics. However, the hardest part of the process was getting the initial call from the recruiter. Had to use personal referrals and just be patient. \n\nI regularly used LeetCode for DSA. Read up about design patterns and multithreading for the LLD interview. Watched videos from the System Design Interview YouTube channel and read a few case studies from Alex Xu\'s books for HLD. Existing Uber interview experiences were helpful in finetuning preparation before each round.

Uber | SDE 2 | Bangalore | July 2024 [Offer]

I have 5 YOE. Applied nowehere else except AWS because I really really like AWS. So I wanted to work for them.\n\nOveral theme of all the LPs was around failures, bad decisions you made and how you recovered from them. Also around having backbone and disagreeing with management and customers. I noticed that there was an extreme emphasis on the leadership principles. so much so that some took an upwards of 40 minutes of just talking about LPs only.\n\n**Phone interview:** \n2LPs + DSA (Top K frequent strings) - (Went really well, The recruiter told me that the responses were great.) \nThe only round where the interviewer actually stuck to the 30-30 rule (30 minutes for LPs, 30 minutes for Technical)\n\nAll rounds were one hour long. did not split between days\n**Osite Round:**\n**Round 1**: LPs/beahvioural only (prolly a bar raiser because he explicitly stated that he is not part of the team I\'m interviewing for)\n            Went really well, Never seen a person so calm, friendly and jolly. I could talk to that man for hours. He was someone who\'s actually excited to hear about your stories. He even wanted to chat around and talk about other stuff until next interviewers show up.\n           Was sort of surprised that no techincal questions were asked. However, he did ask technical questions from my leadership principle answers. Like why I did something like this and not like this etc.\n\n**Round 2**: 2LPs + DSA (Concatenated Words https://leetcode.com/problems/concatenated-words/) \n            Never seen or solved this question before. I looked at the question and I told the interviewer hmm maybe we can solve it by Trie and DP (which is a possible optimal solution). But then i told him lets do brute force instead because maybe i\'m wrong. Absolute idiot I am. nonetheless I coded the brute force. could not give the time complexity but explained the space complexity.\n\n**Round 3:** 2LPs + System Design:\n            Top 10 Viewers of youtube/twitch stream. Suddenly had a severe migraine attack and became super nervous. Brain fogged up and I could only make a brute force architecture. I explained trade offs and how I could improve it. The interviewer didn\'t say anything bad or wrong about it but I\'m sure he may not have been impressed. possibly the worst round. :(\n\n**Round 4:** Hiring Manager: Again LP behavioural only. Was nice to talking to him. Getting to know how the team works and what they have in plan for future was interesting. I was expecting some technical questions but again I was surprised that there were none. There were no technical questions derived from LPs either\n\n**Round 5:** 2LPs + LLD (Unix search as usual): https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/609070/amazon-ood-design-unix-file-search-api)\nWent good. A really coperative, friendly and nice interviewer.\n\nNo result yet as its only been a day or so. Leaderships went well. I did not lie or make up any story. While I\'m praying to God that I succeed. However, I assume I will most likely be rejected mostly due to system design. Nonetheless, I am happy that I at-least got a chance to interview.\n\n**Edit**: I got the offer :) The interviewers were extremely impressed with my LPs and achievements. Regarding system design they think it was an acceptable solution. Not the best in terms of distributed systems but certainly still acceptable. Their feedback was that since I\'ve mainly worked on silo isolation SaaS products they didn\'t really expect me to come up with a distributed systems solution. They did not think it was worth rejecting me as to them I had potential but my potential is being wasted in my current org by working on non-distributed systems. So I\'m happy that everything worked out well. I won\'t let you down Amazon!\n\nAlso I would like to highlight please get familiar with this tool for system design : https://excalidraw.com/\nI\'m not sure if they use this tool for every system design interview, but it certainly was used for mine and I felt that its a bit wonky.

Amazon AWS | SDE-2 | Dublin | July 2024 | Offer

I recently gave interview at google for the SWEIII position. Unfortunately, i didn\'t do well in two of the interview and was rejected. The recruiter told me that i will have to wait for a year before applying again. I wanted to know is the cooldown period 1 year for google. I have read that their is no "official" cooldown period but it is recommended. Can i apply before 1 year if i feel i am ready for the interview again?\nI will write the interview experience post soon..

Google SWEIII Interview [Reject]

Hey, guys! Has anyone received microsoft\'s offer OR callback from microsoft recruiter from 26th July hiring drive? \nJust wanted to check what\'s timeline of getting offer after clearing all interviews

Waiting for Microsoft's Offer | 26th July Hiring Drive

Coding 1&2: all questions are tagged or have been posted on leetcode discussion \nWas able to finish the main problem + followup for both questions. For one of the questions, there was a bug and the interviewer helped point it out. \nSystem design: the most common one about the donation app. They asked a lot of questions about the reliability of the system and there were some hiccups during this round. \nHiring manager: STAR\n\nOverall I had a good interview experience, everyone was nice and helpful, I thought I did a decent job but got rejected with no feedback. \nIt\'s tough out there and seems like companies only extend offers to the perfect candidates these days, that\'s ok though, keep grinding, we got this.

Doordash onsite | E4 SWE | reject

Total Working Experience: 3 years\nCurrent Position: MTS2 at MNC\nLocation: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India\nDate: July 5, 2024\n\nI recently applied for an SDE-2 role in Intuit through a referral. I got a call from the HR 5 days later, saying that my resume is shortlisted. The first interview was scheduled again 5 days later. It was a phone screening round.\n\n**Round 1 - Phone Screening Round [60 mins]**\n* Introduction\n* 25 mins discussion on what my current team does and asked to draw a HLD diagram for the same. Follow up questions were asked as well.\n* I was asked to design APIs for a BookMyShow kind of a platform. The interviewer wanted to see my approach and I was asked followup questions as well. 15 mins went into this discussion.\n* https://leetcode.com/problems/lru-cache/description/ - 20 mins discussion on the approach, pseudocode and time complexity\n\nI was contacted by the recruiter stating that I have passed the round and was given a craft project to work on for 2 weeks.\n\n**Round 2 - Craft Round [60 mins]**\nThere were 4 people in the panel. I had created a PPT for the same which included the assumptions I had taken while creating the project, Functional and Non Functional requirements, Tech Stack used, HLD and LLD design, APIs in Postman, DB Schema, etc.\n* Questions on the craft project.\n* Corner cases and edge cases handling.\n* PUT vs PATCH\n* Path Param vs Query Param\n* DB design related questions\n* Authorization related questions\n\n**Round 3 - Assessor Round [45 mins]**\n* https://leetcode.com/problems/product-of-array-except-self/description/\n* I was asked to write SQL statements on a given problem statement.\n* Discussion on Monolith vs Microservice\n\n**Round 4 - Team Member Round [30 mins]**\n* Some discussion around my current project in my current organisation.\n* Design Patterns\n* Caching Mechanisms\n\n**Round 5 - Team Member Round [30 mins]**\nThis was a typical Behavioral round.\n* Why do you want to leave your current org?\n* Given a prod issue, how would you debug it?

Intuit | SDE2 | Bengaluru | Rejected

Status: Laidoff recently(SDE-1)\nExperience: 1.8\nPosition: SDE-2 at Amazon(AWS EC-2)\nLocation: Dresden, Germany\nDate: Aug 2024\n\nI recently interviewed with Amazon, and while I answered all the questions, I was ultimately not selected.\n\nLPs Round:\nThe interview began with brief introduction then questions centered around Amazon\u2019s LPs. I was asked about handling strict deadlines and dealing with extended deadlines where a feature faced heavy load. I shared relevant experiences but, in hindsight, I could have highlighted my decision-making and leadership qualities more effectively.\n\nScreening Round: DSA + System Design\nThe technical portion covered distributed systems, unique ID generation, and message queues. I discussed concepts like data consistency, fault tolerance, and message queue benefits. \n\nIn the coding exercise, I implemented a stack class, including dynamic sizing and type handling. I explained my approach to managing memory and supporting various data types.\n\n I think my responses to Amazon\u2019s Leadership Principles (LPs) could have been stronger, which may have impacted the outcome. Also, the position required quite a bit of experience, and I didn\'t have that much, so could have improved my System Design basics.

Amazon | SDE2 | Germany | Aug 2024 [Reject]

Current role: Mid Senior Role in FAANG\nEducation: Btech from Tier3\nExperience : 5 years\n\nRecently, I interviewed with Microsoft for SDE2 position and received an offer. \nThere were total of 5 rounds. 1st round was OA, then 1 DSA round post that two LLD rounds and lastly managaerial round. \n\nI was reached out by a recruiter through Naukri in June last week. I expressed my interest for the interviews. \n\n**Online Assessment:**  Received an OA link after 2-3 days and recruiter suggested to take it within 3-4 days. There were two coding questions which had to be done within 90 min. I can\'t recall exact questions but 1st was related to prefix array and was easy. 2nd question was based on easy-medium 2D DP. Completed it within 45 min , all test cases passed. \n\nI got an update after few days from recruiter that i have cleared OA but received update about further rounds after  ~3 weeks where it was informed that there will be total 4 rounds - 1. DSA 2. LLD 3. HLD 4. Managerial on same day. \n\n**DSA Round :** Interviewer started with a easy String question , where she was just intersted in my approach. Post that, i was asked to provide approach and code the solution for https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-substring-without-repeating-characters/description/ . Code provided the expected output for various test cases that we discussed during interview. Second question was based on https://leetcode.com/problems/lru-cache/ . We also discussed how request and response can be modelled as per LRU Cache solution. We discussed time and space complexities as well. \n\n**LLD Round 1:** I was asked to do low level design for Parking Lot. We came up with the scope of problem, defined requirements to focus and also some extended requirements if time permitted. Came up with entities that i could think of to define teh overall model. Interviewer asked to implement the model(class/interface/functions). I was not asked to code all the functionalities rather important ones like how do we find the optimal parking slot for a given vehicle etc.   \n\nFeedback was to include more real life scenarios and focus on validations as well. \n\n**LLD Round 2:** It was spposed to be HLD round but interviewer asked to do low level design for Online Book Reader System like Kindle. Followed the same approach as that of previous round - defined requirements, asked questions about scope and expectation, took a learning from previous round and defined another section for assumptions as well.\nHere, also i was asked to code important functionalities. \nlater, interviewer modified the question to modify the existing design to handle multiple sources for books instead of single one (like Aggregator System). I proposed the modifiations, was asked to code those changes. No major callouts from interviewer. \n\n**Managerial Round:** It started with introduction and behavioral questions like why do i want to switch ? Why Microsoft ? What are my expectations ? Some deep dive on my current project and team. \nThen, I was asked to code a Linked List question where given a linked list and two values m & n , we had to retain first m nodes and delete next n nodes until we reach the end. We discussed various test cases required for this problem.\nLater, I was asked HLD for a problem similar to Top K Visited/Frequent for last 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week given an input stream. Interviewer was just interested in knowing my approach, how i arrive at solution , various options available and how to build it for distributed system. \n\nReceived confirmation about selection in subsequent week. \n\nFew Points : \n* All interviewers were very polite and helpful. \n* Had done 1-2 silly mistakes in code but upon highlighting, corrected it.\n* In LLD/HLD, highlight assumptions very clearly. \n* I was thinking out loud during all rounds and provided relavant comments, used proper variable naming in code. \n\nOffer Details :  TBD

Microsoft | SDE 2 (L61)| Hyderabad | Aug 2024  [Offer]

**EDIT**: I noticed there has been some interest in other details from my interview experience, hence I have added a bunch of details for questions posted in comments and otherwise.  Hope this helps people in the same boat as I was a few weeks ago.\n\nHey all, giving back to the community as this forum has helped me a lot in my preparations.\n\n**Background**\nYOE: 16 years of experience - 8 years consulting, 8 years at FAANG+.\nLeetCode stats: Didn\'t really track, must be under 200.  I only solved blind 75, NeetCode 150, Meta top 50 in last 6 months and relying on luck as it plays a major factor in these types of interviews. \n\nI got reached out by a Meta recruiter and scheduled a phone interview.\n\n**Approach to prepare**\nI have grinded LeetCode before, twice (once in 2017 and then in 2019).  Things have changed significantly since.  \nThis time around though, I had to improvise.  Time was my friend and enemy at the same time as I was juggling a new-born, day job and LeetCode grind all at once.\n\nI used to pick one topic from blind 75 / Neetcode 150 per week.  Directly start with watching the problem video solution on NeetCode Youtube channel, then I\'d implement its Java version on Leetcode.  (I really didn\'t have time to let-me-attempt-first-and-then-look-at-solution) \n\n**Phone interview**\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/powx-n/description/\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-remove-to-make-valid-parentheses/description/\n\n**Coding interview 1:**\n\n1. Merge 3 sorted arrays (given with duplicates) by removing duplicates.\nI came up with a function to merge 2 sorted arrays and called it twice.  IMO, I took longer than expected (until the interviewer said 10 mins left, let\'s do a second question)  I think I did ok-ish in the question. \n\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-vertical-order-traversal/description/\nThis is the most asked question at Meta in last 6 months. I was able to explain approach, complexities and code it in under 7 mins.  I\'d like to believe it compensated for the first question performance.\n\n**Coding interview 2:**\n\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-duplicates-from-sorted-array/description/\nStraight forward question. I was able to explain approach, time and space complexities and we moved on to second question in 7 mins. \n\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/making-a-large-island/description/\nWe discussed the approach for 10-15 mins. Interviewer was super helpful in providing hints and guiding me at the same time tackle me with trick questions.  He was looking for pre-computed areas in matrix (Honestly I couldn\'t come up with the logic during interview, I saw it after interview and did a facepalm).  Nevertheless, I was able to code a solution with inverted approach - look for `0`, convert it to `1` and calculate `islandArea` by keeping track of `maxArea` for result. \nThis approach works but it isn\'t efficient and it times out on leetcode.  Interviewer seemed happy with the solution.\n\n\nI knew that behavioral and system design rounds will decide E5 vs E6, so I invested my time equally to prepare for these 2 rounds well.\n\n**Behavioral**\nAll the questions were of the theme, "Tell me about a time when..." and they were mostly about guaging how did I handle conflict, ambiguity, uncertainity and setbacks.  \n\n**Tip**: \n1. If you prepare your answers keeping Amazon LPs as reference point, create a matrix of "most challenging, hardest bug, conflicts and learning" for each company that your worked for, for each LP (sounds easy but it will take a lot of time the first time)  then you should be good with any of the behavioral interview at any FAANG+ companies. (Netflix might be an exception as their culture memo is very different than rest).  Do this once and thank me later. \n2. Know 2 or 3 features/projects in great details, explain it to yourself, reherse them over and over again when you take shower/drive/walk/workout until you feel confident on answering anything relating to that work.  \n\n\n**System Design**\n- Design Top 10 songs for each user on Spotify \n\nI implemented something on the lines of https://www.hellointerview.com/learn/system-design/answer-keys/top-k \n\nI have to admit, **www.hellointerview.com** is a relatively newer resource out there for System Design prep but it has got great quality content.  Highly recommend. (This post is not sponsored by them - I took 2 paid mock interviews with them and it really helped me focus on my weak points as the interviewers are from FAANG+)\n\n**Note:**\nOne advise I\'d like to give is that don\'t overwhelm yourself with so many resources out there nowadays for tech interview preparations. I did the same mistake and course corrected myself upon realizing it. \n\nResources I used:\n1. Blind 75, Neetcode 150, Leetcode premium, Youtube premium\n2. www.neetcode.io\n2. www.hellointerview.com for System Design\n\nGood luck to who is reading this.  You got this!\n\n**PS**:  If you came this far to read, I can sense that you must be in a "grind mode" and I completely empathize with you as I was in the same boat.  Managing a newborn, office work and grinding leetcode, all at once wasn\'t easy for me.  I spent about 3 hours on avg for 3 months (10 pm - 1 am) including weekends and truth be told, I hated every.bit.of.it.  But I understand this is what you got to do to get into FAANG+ companies, so no complains there.  I am sharing this detail just to assure you, the reader, that control the controllable and leave rest up to your luck.  Good luck.\n

Meta | E5 | Offer | Menlo Park

**Current Experience:** 2.5 year+ at a product based MNC\n\nRecently i appeared for ORACLE OCI ic2 role. I applied through their career portal.\n\nThere were total of five rounds each one was 1 hour round. First one being screening and then 2 technical and 2 managerial rounds.\n\n**Screening round:** Technical round\nTwo interviewer were there. They started with introduction and project i worked on. Discussion around project like schema and api it expose.\nThen they gave one coding question:\nVariation of https://leetcode.com/problems/group-anagrams/description/ where we have to handle any symbol. Interviewer was convinced with my solution.\n\nAfter one week i got call , feedback is positive and they are scheduling four more rounds of interview(two technical and two mangerial). I applied for 1.5 day leave in my current organization.\n\n**First round:** Technical\nInterviewer was 10 year experienced. It started with introduction and then project grilling.\nHe gave one coding question:\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/next-greater-element-i/description/ \nMy bad i asked should we discuss first or should i write code. He replied if you already know the question then i can ask some other question. I replied i don\'t know :) .\nI gave O(n^2) approach first and then stack based approach.\nThen he came to in general question like:\n1. How you handle prod issue?\n2. How you make sure prod issue don\'t impact client for longer time?\n\nTime was left, so he again ask one coding question:\nhttps://leetcode.com/problems/search-a-2d-matrix-ii/description/ \nI was knowing optimised solution. I started with O(m*n) then O(nlog(m))  then added some filtering logic and then i pretent i am thinking optimised solution seeing 15 min time was there. But again my bad he said lets move on and he asked to me if i have any question. Inrerview ended early. I am regretting i should have asked for 5 more minute since i was knowing the solution. But he was convinced.\n\n**Second round:** Technical round\nInterviewer was really good and supportive.\nStarted with introduction and then he said 30 minute is for coding challenge and remaining 30 min is for system design.\nCoding question: https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-path-in-binary-matrix/description/ \nSystem design : LLD of cricbuzz. Mainly focused on schema.\n\n**Third round:** Managerial round\nShe was manager. She started with introduction and project grilling.\nThen lot of scenario based question:\n1. Any colleage inspires you?\n2. Any tech challenge you faced?\n3. Any scenario when your boss changed and how you handled?\n4. Any scenario when you missed deadline?\n5. How you handle priority change?\n6.  Why switching job?\n\nCoding question : Variation of https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-intervals/description/\nFirst I gave brute force solution and then most optimised solution.\n\nIn the end, she asked if i have any question. Again my bad i ask at what stage oracle cloud is. She replied what do u mean by stage. I replied its with clients or its in Poc. He said you can google its going with full-fledged  and have many clients.\n\n\n**Fourth round:** Managerial round\nIntroduction and in depth resume grilling.\nAgain lot of Scenario based questions.\nAsked to write code for merge sort and also replicate deadlock using threads.\n\nIn the end, I asked for feedback, he said I am good in coding but i need to learn beyound day to day work like devops. He was from devops team and i don\'t know much devops that might be the reason.\n\nTips atleast for me:\n* Always ask relevent question in the end or ask in general question like work culture extra.\n* Practice to start with brute force and slowly move towards to optimised solution. We genius leetcoders :) starts with optimised solution.\n* Be confident.\n\nAfter long time i gave this long interview thats why I did some mistakes but after giving all round, i felt i am still worthy.\n\nAfter one week , I heard feedback is positive and HR discussed salary, location and other stuff and said it will take 10-12 days to release offer letter after email approval. But later i got to know that position is on hold. Again my bad luck hunted me. My 90 days notice period might be the issue. \n\nWill update this post if I hear back.\n\nHope it will help others...

Oracle OCI || IC2 || Verbal offer

Hi everyone,\nI want to give back to this wonderful community by sharing my recent interview experience at Meta for an L5 software engineering position.\nThis was the very first time I interviewed with Meta. Earlier, I had interviewed with Amazon only, that too 3 years back. So, this was my second FAANG interview.\n\nScreening:\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree/description/\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/powx-n/description/\nFeedback: Strong Hire\n\nCoding Round 1 : \n1: https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-remove-to-make-valid-parentheses/description/\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/validate-binary-search-tree/description/\nFeedback : Strong Hire\n\nCoding Round 2 :\n1. https://leetcode.com/problems/nested-list-weight-sum/description/\n2. https://leetcode.com/problems/k-closest-points-to-origin/description/\nFeedback : Strong Hire\n\nBehaviour Round:\n1. Tell me about your most proud project\n2. Tell me about a time you had to pivot in your current work\n3. Tell me about a time when you had to deal with difficult coworker\n4. Tell me areas of improvement for your self\nFeedback : Hire\n\nDesign Round:\nAd click aggregator with 24 hour granularity only.\nFeedback : Lean Hire\n\nVerdict: Rejected in HC . They are not ready for a redo of design round. I had to ask :) .\n\nMy Observations:\nI had  preapred well for all the rounds and I had already seen/prepared these questions. But still outcome was not in my favour.\nI feel time management is super important in design rounds. With introduction and questions by interviewer, you are effectively left with\n25 to 30 mins only for the design round. Even if you have seen the question before, one random question from interviewer can throw you\noff from whatever strategy you have. But one thing is for sure, taking an iterative approach will not land you anywhere. You have to come up with best possible solution quickly as time is very less. \nI did not take any mock interviews for this and I cannot say how effective it would have been had I taken mock interviews. Maybe next time I will take some mock interview round :).\n\nFor behaviour questions, it always pays up to be prepared for them. I had prepared extensive stories out of my experience and gave my answers accordingly. I don\'t like to follow STAR format but answer questions more like story telling. How can you make your story really engaging? I always start by keeping this question in mind and communicate my answers accordingly.\n\nFor coding question, I was lucky enough to get straightforward meta tagged questions. Hence, they were a breeze for me.\n\nCompetition is super tough for FAANG and one mistake can cost you months of preparation.  In the end I believe, you can prepare only so much. Interviewing is damn exhausting process. MY whole meta process went for 2 months. Luck matters a lot in interviews and it matters more in FAANG interviews. There is cool down of 1 year. I need to re-evaluate my goals and priorities and see If it makes sense to retry for Meta.\n\nDoes any one has insight into how HC makes their decision. Do they do it offline or do they meet face to face? My recruiter came back with results one day prior to what was mentioned in the email.

Meta | E5 | London | July |Reject

**Timeline from first call to final offer**\nApprox 6 months, Feb - Jul\n\n**Experience**\n5+ years at the time of interviewing, across 4 product based companies.\n\n**LeetCode \'Experience\'**\n![image](https://assets.leetcode.com/users/images/b6502484-2bb7-44b2-b953-02162c359a92_1722960298.0399187.png)\n\n\n**Interview rounds**\nApologies, I don\'t remember all the questions that were asked. But none of them were straightforward leetcode questions as far as I can tell.\n\n**Screening Round (Hire)**\nSimple string related question with a small follow up. Took approx 30 minutes in total\nCould have done better with communication\n\n**DSA 1 (Strong Hire)**\n\n**DSA 2 (Strong Hire)**\nGiven an infinite ancestoral tree with child -> parent (both parents) relationship.\nFind if two given persons are siblings\nFollow up 1: Find if two given persons are first cousins\nFollow up 2: Find lowest common ancestor\nNote that it\'s not a usual tree with single relationship, every node here has two parents\n\n**DSA 3 (Lean Hire)**\nThis was supposed to be an Android domain round as per my recruiter but there was some confusion in scheduling.\nVery complicated problem of designing a logic for a logger. I was successfully able to provide a solution using sliding window approach but for the follow up question my approach didn\'t work. I had to come up with an entirely new algorithm, and hence took me sometime to figure out and rewrite all the code. The solution was correct (I think!) but was not able to code it fully. The interviewer looked satisfied though.\n\n**Googlyness (Strong Hire)**\nTypical scenario based questions. Although a lot of focus on leadership and team management skills. They asked me a lot of questions around my \'Team Lead\' experience.\n\n**System Design Strong Hire**\nDesign an app that controls a GOOGLE neon logo inside some office. Using the app, you can change the colors of each letter in the logo. Obviously this app would be used by multiple people so you need to handle concurrency, state management (local state of what is being shown on the app vs the actual logo itself), bad network cases and failures.\nI loved this round, interviewer was very interactive unlike others where they just sit back and let you struggle.\n\nSince I had one not-so-great round, I was a bit skeptical that I\'ll get L5. But eventually I got a great team match that aligned with the type of experience they were looking for. I had a great VP recommendation, apparantely.\n\n**Final offer**\nL5 Android\n\nCompensation details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5597698/google-l5-android-bangalore/2561004

Google | L5 Android | Offer

Hi,\n\nI wanted to share my recent Microsoft Hiring Event (Aug 01) experience. There were 4 rounds with 15 min break in between and a 1hr lunch break after the 2nd round.\n1. **Round 1**: https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array/description/ , follow up + 2 Behavioral questions\n2. **Round 2**: This was supposed to be HLD round but the interviewer deep dived into my recent project, like every part of it, basically you must know your project inside out. + 2 behavioral.\n3. **Round 3**: Return the Shortest path between source and destination in a grid, you will be given source and destination coordinates.  + 1 behavioral questions.\n4. **Round 4**: Was asked to convert a string into numbers using TDD principle and the mapping of numbers to alphabets is like that of traditional phone keypad.\nex: "abc": 2, "def": 3 so on..  if input is "b fz", output is 2203339999. Asked lot of questions around the constraints and was able to code and execute successfully the interviewer was also convinced. + 2 behavioral questions.\n\nRounds 1,2,4 went really well, Round3 my code was not returning the shortest path. Feedback was reject! The recruiter informed me in 2 business days about the outcome. I just feel terrible about missing this opportunity. Hope it helps. All the best for your interview!\n\n

Microsoft | Software Engineer IC2/IC3 | Redmond WA |   Reject

Status: IN3, Walmart Global Tech, Bengaluru - 6yrs overall experience\nPosition: Senior Applications Engineer at Oracle\nLocation: Bengaluru, India\nDate: June, 2024\n\n**Round 1:**\n\nInterviewer Explained about their project:\n\nDiscussed the suite of 40 microservices in the Akanics SaaS product.\n\nTechnical Questions:\n* Docker: Concepts of Docker networks, bridges, and port exposure.\n* Java: Garbage collection, including Young and Old generation memory and algorithms.\n* Test-Driven Development (TDD): Definition, support for TDD, and its downsides.\n* Class Loading: Handling of class loading and conflicts.\n* What are the challenges you faced in Microservices architecture\n\n\n**DSA Question:**\n\n* Given a matrix of 0s and 1s, check if there\u2019s a path from the top row to the bottom row, moving only left, down, or right - [check for possible path](https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/241889/check-for-possible-path-in-2d-matrix).\n\n**Verdict:**\n\nCleared the first round.\n\n**Round 2:**\n\n**Introduction:**\nDiscussed personal projects and experience.\n\n**Technical Questions:**\n\n* HashMap: Internal workings, difference between HashMap and ConcurrentHashMap, and concurrency.\n* Java 8 Streams: Using Java 8 streams to find students in the CS department from a list of universities.\n* Design Patterns:\n\t* Singleton pattern.\n\t* Builder design pattern.\n\n**Spring Framework:**\n\n* Difference between @Component and @Service annotations.\n* Multiple application contexts in a Spring application.\n* Bean scopes: Singleton vs. prototype, and behavior of @PreConstruct and @PostConstruct when the bean scope is not singleton.\n* Conditional bean instantiation.\n* Sorting Algorithms: Time and space complexity. Explained about merge sort, how it works and its time complexity.\n* Memory Management:\n\t* Gave a scenario, where we are making a call to some data resource to fetch the list of objects.\n\t* Told that we would get an error, when we try to store this result in ArrayList, but no error if we try to store it in LinkedList. Asked why there would not be any error.\n\n\n**Verdict:**\n\nCleared the second round.\n\n**Round 3:**\n\n**Managerial Round:**\n\n* Questions about reasons for switching and team fit.\n* Project Discussion:\n\t* Asked about their project and tech stack.\n* Asked questions how would you perform load testing\n\n**Design Question:**\nWith only 5 minutes left he asked to design a debugger - I explained the approach\n\n**Verdict:**\n\nCleared the third round and received an offer. Requested relocation from Bengaluru to Hyderabad. But the Hiring Manager was not in favour of it.

Oracle | Senior Applications Engineer | Bengaluru | June 2024 [Offer]

I had my 3 rounds of interviews on 26th July. \nThen recruiter called me on same day to schedule my HM round on 30th July. \nAfter my HM round, I contacted recruiter and she told me that the feedback is positive and a senior recruiter will contact me soon.\nI have not received any call yet. \nCan someone please let me know what\'s the usual timeline to get the offer? \nI am worried as my last working day is approaching fast

Microsoft 26th Hiring Drive | Waiting for offer

Status: IN3, Walmart Global Tech, Bengaluru - 6yrs overall experience\nPosition: Senior Software Developer at Oracle\nLocation: Bengaluru, India\nDate: Dec, 2023\n\n**Round 1:**\n\n**Introduction:**\n\n* The interviewer asked about my current work, reasons for wanting to switch jobs, and the team I worked in at Oracle.\n* The interviewer thoroughly read my resume and asked about various areas\n\n**Topics Discussed:**\n\n**Kafka:**\n\n* Explained the architecture.\n* Discussed the message queues used and why we didn\'t use a standard message queue.\n* Described the use case of Kafka in my application.\n* Shared a scenario where I had to debug issues with missing messages in Kafka.\n\n\n**Java:**\n\n* Discussed the version of Java I am using.\n* Talked about streams and filters.\n* Mentioned the features of Java 11 I have used.\n* Explained the use of data structures like binary trees for code optimization.\n* Described my experience with multithreading and the thread lifecycle.\n\n**Authorization Module:**\n\n* Explained the working of the authorization module, token generation, and validation.\n\n\n**Camunda Workflows:**\n\n* Described how Camunda workflows function and interact with the code.\n\n\n**Performance Optimizations:**\n\n* Discussed any performance optimizations I have made in the application.\n* CICD Framework and Cloud Usage:\n\t* Briefly talked about my work in the CICD framework and the cloud used (no in-depth questions).\n\n**DSA Question:**\n\n* Initially, the interviewer thought I wasn\'t familiar with data structures, but I clarified my understanding.\n* Question: [Word Break II](https://leetcode.com/problems/word-break-ii/description/)\n* The interviewer wasn\'t focused on me coding the solution but on explaining my approach.\n* He hinted that the problem could be solved using backtracking.\n* I explained my approach and discussed the time and space complexity.\n\n**Verdict :**\n\nI tried calling the HR multiple times, no response

Oracle DBaaS | Senior Software Developer | Bengaluru | Dec 2023 [Passed]

Status: IN3, Walmart Global Tech, Bengaluru - 6yrs overall experience\nPosition: Principal Software Developer at Oracle\nLocation: Bengaluru, India\nDate: Oct, 2023\n\n**Round 1:**\n\n**Introduction:**\n\n* The interviewer asked me to introduce myself and describe my current work.\n* I was asked why I want to switch from my current job.\n\n\n**Technical Question:**\n\nThe problem asked was [Jump Game II](https://leetcode.com/problems/jump-game-ii/?envType=study-plan-v2&envId=top-interview-150).\n\n**My Approach:**\n\nI initially proposed a brute force approach. While it passed some test cases, it likely would have resulted in Time Limit Exceeded (TLE) for larger inputs.\nThe problem should ideally be solved using either a dynamic programming or greedy approach.\nI attempted a dynamic programming solution. The interviewer understood my approach, but the test cases were failing.\n\n**Time Complexity Discussion:**\n\nI was asked to explain the time complexity of both my brute force and dynamic programming approaches.\n\n**Discussion about My Work:**\n\nThe interviewer then asked about the major milestones in my current role.\nI was specifically asked to describe one feature I have implemented.

Oracle data center  | Principal Software Developer | Bengaluru | Oct 2023 [Reject]

---\n### **Overall**\n---\n<img src="https://assets.leetcode.com/users/images/a7ee161c-b8b1-40cf-870a-ed54398b0e27_1722036315.350215.png" width="300" height="300"/>\n\nI have personally received a lot from community and this has made me reach to my dream company. So here I would like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts with the intention to contribute back.\n\n**Previous Employment**\nAmazon - SDE-II (and multiple startups)\n**Experience**\n~7.5 years\n**Process Time**\n6+ months, since 1st interview round\n**Attempt**\n4th\n**Status**\nAccepted Offer\n**Location**\nBangalore, India\n**Position**\nL5 - Senior Software Engineer\n\n**Rounds**\n* Algo-DS (3 rounds + 1 Re-round):\nAlthough 1-2 questions were relatively easy and were focusing on implementation of DS, For my case, I could see majority of questions around Graph: Topological Sort, DFS, BFS etc.\n\n* System Design (1 round):\nI was asked to design Image Hosting System.\n\n* Googlyness (1 round):\nBehavioral round. I would strongly recomment to go well prepared for this round, considering your past experience and scenarios, where you may create a bunch of questions in well advanced, on how did you handle certain situations. i.e How did you convince management for certain solution, Time when you worked with your Team on a Project, Challenging Project you have worked on and what did you Learn from it etc.\n\n**Verdict**\nDS-Algo-1: Hire\nDS-Algo-2: Lean Hire\nDS-Algo-3: Lean Hire, \nDS-Algo-Re: Lean Hire, \nGooglyness: Lean Hire, \nSD: Strong Hire\n\n---\n### **Google: Things to Know**\n---\n**SOS**\nStandard Google process is already Documented across the web. I just want to state here Statement of Support (SOS), which is a confidence from Hiring Manager (HM), recruiter can always take before submitting your packet to Hiring Comittee (HC). This just helps as a tie-breaker when HC committee is indeed on fence. However as said, it is just a support, it can not completelly change the outcome of your performance.\n\n**VP Approval**\nIf your packet is has indeed good feedbacks, but HC rejects your case, your recruiter always has a way to challenge the decision with VP approval. But you need a support from Hiring manager (HM), who is willing to advocate your case. Please note, such cases are very rare and should not be used as abackup of Negative feedbacks.\n\n**Team Match**\nI have personally gone through 7-8 different team before joining the one. This team can be same as the one from where you received SOS, or can be a different, up to you.\n\n**Detailed Feedbacks**\nPrimary feedbacks (Hire, No Hire,...) are just one part of your interview outcome. If process could have been so straighforward, even system could have given Yes/No for the hiring decision of every candidate. Hiring Comittee (HC) always looks for Detailed Feedbacks, which means comments specified by interviewers, which gives supportive evidence to the primary feedbacks each interviewer has given. Sometimes you are on fence, but detailed feedbacks are really good, which may save you ! However, this can be the other way around as well, btw ! In case of dilemma, candidate may receive Re-round as well.\n\n**Panel\'s Support**\nYour recruiter can always support your case if you really have good feedbacks from interviewers. He and even sometimes Hiring Manager (if you have taken SOS) would play a role of advocate to support your packet. In my case I give credit to my recruiter for making sure that I receive L5 offer, not L4.\n\n**Down Level**\nThis is a contraversial question: Should I accept a Google offer with Down-Level? I do not wish to argue on this, as this may vary depending on individual\'s choice and need. But one thing I would surely say, Higher Level comes with Money, whereas Lower Level brings a Comfort and Time to get adjusted in company with relatively lower expectations. You should definitely give an additional thought before concluding yourself.\n\n**Max-Attempts**\nMaximum 3 attemps are allowed in Google is myth, I personally cleared it on 4th attempt, so that I can confirm that.\n\n---\n### **Tips for Preparation**\n---\n**1. Focus over Breadth instead Depth**\nYou should always try to cover breadth and clear fundamentals to an extent before jumping to Top questions (Top 75, Google Questions etc). Proceeding with the later one can easily deviate you from your focus, which happens for majority of candidates.\n\n**2. Focus over Quality instead of Quantity**\nI see everywhere people posting now a days number of problems they have solved so far. Let me tell you with my experience, You need not to solve 700-800 problems to crack FAANG. All you need to do is to follow 1st step making sure to cover your bredth of concepts with fundamental understanding of it, and then make sure to practice atleast 3-5 problems in each sub-topic (i.e Graph->Krushkal\'s Algorithm, Graph ->Disjoint Sets). Even till today there are barely around 200 problems which I have solved over LeetCode. Doing this can prepare you atleast for 90% of the interview rounds.\n\n**3. Focus on Key Topics**\nIf you are appearing for Google, you should never miss these topics: Graph, Tree, Heap, Recursion (DP, Backtracking etc), Trie, Monotonic Stack, 2D Array + Graph. However it\'s always a good idea to look around for recent experiences online, as this may change with time.\n\n**4. Mock Rounds**\nMock rounds are indeed very useful while preparing for FAANG, especially in case of System Design. There are bunch of sites who helos you with mock rounds, that helps you to do net practice and boost your confidence. But the sad part is they all are pretty expensive for System Design. In worst case you can always give mocks from various employers (where you are not very much keen) or even can make ChatGPT your interviewer. Check [**this**](https://chat.openai.com/share/f2a7c5e3-0f4c-4990-becc-69dc0dfde607) sample.\n\n**5. If I can Do, Certainly You Can**\nEvery individual has capability to crack Google, It\'s just a matter of Time. This was 4th time for mewith Google. As we know, Failures are not Failures, they are just Stepping-Stones for the upcoming Success. You should always do Retrospection of yourself to move a step closure every time. So, Keep Improving & Keep Trying !\n\n**6. There is Always a Next Time**\nAs we know, Hardwork and Focus can beat Luck, but there are always edge cases where we get disapointed. I personally had bad experiences with companies including Google, where interviewer has full freedom to ask anything, even if that Question doesn\'t follow certain industry standards. I was little lucky this time, with a good recruiter who can help remove outliers. However, I would never encourage anyone to Rely on Luck and wait for the Opportunity to Knock the door !! Instead of blaming yourself, Take a Learning, Take a break and Prepare yourself for the Next time.\n\n---\n### **Useful Materials**\n---\n**Algorithm/Data Structure**\n- LeetCode premium : Its a Gem, start topic by topic\n- Cracking The Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell : For beginners, to know How to think for any DS/Algo problem\n- Abdul Bari on YouTube\n- Pr*mp: Mock rounds of Algo/DS\n\n**System Design**\n- Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann : A book to clear your fundamentals\n- System Design Primer by Donne Martin\n- System Design Interview by Alex Xu (Part-1 + Part-2)\n- Mock rounds (on various online platforms)\n\nAll the very best !!\n\nReference: [Compensation](https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5547149/Google-or-L5-or-Bangalore-or-Offer)\n\n---\n*PS: Trust Yourself, so the Rest Can !*

Google | L5 | Bangalore | July 2024 | Offer

---\n### **Overall**\n---\n<img src="https://assets.leetcode.com/users/images/a7ee161c-b8b1-40cf-870a-ed54398b0e27_1722036315.350215.png" width="300" height="300"/>\n\nI have personally received a lot from community and this has made me reach to my dream company. So here I would like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts with the intention to contribute back.\n\n**Previous Employment**\nAmazon - SDE-II (and multiple startups)\n**Experience**\n~7.5 years\n**Process Time**\n6+ months, since 1st interview round\n**Attempt**\n4th\n**Status**\nAccepted Offer\n**Location**\nBangalore, India\n**Position**\nL5 - Senior Software Engineer\n\n**Rounds**\n* Algo-DS (3 rounds + 1 Re-round):\nAlthough 1-2 questions were relatively easy and were focusing on implementation of DS, For my case, I could see majority of questions around Graph: Topological Sort, DFS, BFS etc.\n\n* System Design (1 round):\nI was asked to design Image Hosting System.\n\n* Googlyness (1 round):\nBehavioral round. I would strongly recomment to go well prepared for this round, considering your past experience and scenarios, where you may create a bunch of questions in well advanced, on how did you handle certain situations. i.e How did you convince management for certain solution, Time when you worked with your Team on a Project, Challenging Project you have worked on and what did you Learn from it etc.\n\n**Verdict**\nDS-Algo-1: Hire\nDS-Algo-2: Lean Hire\nDS-Algo-3: Lean Hire, \nDS-Algo-Re: Lean Hire, \nGooglyness: Lean Hire, \nSD: Strong Hire\n\n---\n### **Google: Things to Know**\n---\n**SOS**\nStandard Google process is already Documented across the web. I just want to state here Statement of Support (SOS), which is a confidence from Hiring Manager (HM), recruiter can always take before submitting your packet to Hiring Comittee (HC). This just helps as a tie-breaker when HC committee is indeed on fence. However as said, it is just a support, it can not completelly change the outcome of your performance.\n\n**VP Approval**\nIf your packet is has indeed good feedbacks, but HC rejects your case, your recruiter always has a way to challenge the decision with VP approval. But you need a support from Hiring manager (HM), who is willing to advocate your case. Please note, such cases are very rare and should not be used as abackup of Negative feedbacks.\n\n**Team Match**\nI have personally gone through 7-8 different team before joining the one. This team can be same as the one from where you received SOS, or can be a different, up to you.\n\n**Detailed Feedbacks**\nPrimary feedbacks (Hire, No Hire,...) are just one part of your interview outcome. If process could have been so straighforward, even system could have given Yes/No for the hiring decision of every candidate. Hiring Comittee (HC) always looks for Detailed Feedbacks, which means comments specified by interviewers, which gives supportive evidence to the primary feedbacks each interviewer has given. Sometimes you are on fence, but detailed feedbacks are really good, which may save you ! However, this can be the other way around as well, btw ! In case of dilemma, candidate may receive Re-round as well.\n\n**Panel\'s Support**\nYour recruiter can always support your case if you really have good feedbacks from interviewers. He and even sometimes Hiring Manager (if you have taken SOS) would play a role of advocate to support your packet. In my case I give credit to my recruiter for making sure that I receive L5 offer, not L4.\n\n**Down Level**\nThis is a contraversial question: Should I accept a Google offer with Down-Level? I do not wish to argue on this, as this may vary depending on individual\'s choice and need. But one thing I would surely say, Higher Level comes with Money, whereas Lower Level brings a Comfort and Time to get adjusted in company with relatively lower expectations. You should definitely give an additional thought before concluding yourself.\n\n**Max-Attempts**\nMaximum 3 attemps are allowed in Google is myth, I personally cleared it on 4th attempt, so that I can confirm that.\n\n---\n### **Tips for Preparation**\n---\n**1. Focus over Breadth instead Depth**\nYou should always try to cover breadth and clear fundamentals to an extent before jumping to Top questions (Top 75, Google Questions etc). Proceeding with the later one can easily deviate you from your focus, which happens for majority of candidates.\n\n**2. Focus over Quality instead of Quantity**\nI see everywhere people posting now a days number of problems they have solved so far. Let me tell you with my experience, You need not to solve 700-800 problems to crack FAANG. All you need to do is to follow 1st step making sure to cover your bredth of concepts with fundamental understanding of it, and then make sure to practice atleast 3-5 problems in each sub-topic (i.e Graph->Krushkal\'s Algorithm, Graph ->Disjoint Sets). Even till today there are barely around 200 problems which I have solved over LeetCode. Doing this can prepare you atleast for 90% of the interview rounds.\n\n**3. Focus on Key Topics**\nIf you are appearing for Google, you should never miss these topics: Graph, Tree, Heap, Recursion (DP, Backtracking etc), Trie, Monotonic Stack, 2D Array + Graph. However it\'s always a good idea to look around for recent experiences online, as this may change with time.\n\n**4. Mock Rounds**\nMock rounds are indeed very useful while preparing for FAANG, especially in case of System Design. There are bunch of sites who helos you with mock rounds, that helps you to do net practice and boost your confidence. But the sad part is they all are pretty expensive for System Design. In worst case you can always give mocks from various employers (where you are not very much keen) or even can make ChatGPT your interviewer. Check [**this**](https://chat.openai.com/share/f2a7c5e3-0f4c-4990-becc-69dc0dfde607) sample.\n\n**5. If I can Do, Certainly You Can**\nEvery individual has capability to crack Google, It\'s just a matter of Time. This was 4th time for mewith Google. As we know, Failures are not Failures, they are just Stepping-Stones for the upcoming Success. You should always do Retrospection of yourself to move a step closure every time. So, Keep Improving & Keep Trying !\n\n**6. There is Always a Next Time**\nAs we know, Hardwork and Focus can beat Luck, but there are always edge cases where we get disapointed. I personally had bad experiences with companies including Google, where interviewer has full freedom to ask anything, even if that Question doesn\'t follow certain industry standards. I was little lucky this time, with a good recruiter who can help remove outliers. However, I would never encourage anyone to Rely on Luck and wait for the Opportunity to Knock the door !! Instead of blaming yourself, Take a Learning, Take a break and Prepare yourself for the Next time.\n\n---\n### **Useful Materials**\n---\n**Algorithm/Data Structure**\n- Cracking The Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell : For beginners, to know How to think for any DS/Algo problem\n- Abdul Bari on YouTube\n\n**System Design**\n- Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann : A book to clear your fundamentals\n- System Design Primer by Donne Martin\n- System Design Interview by Alex Xu (Part-1 + Part-2)\n- Mock rounds (on various online platforms)\n\nAll the very best !!\n\nReference: [Compensation](https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5547149/Google-or-L5-or-Bangalore-or-Offer)\n\n---\n*PS: Trust Yourself, so the Rest Can !*

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