Salesforce | Interactive Brokers | Tesla | Amazon| Intuit | Wayfair | Coinbase | Postmates
Anonymous User
6475

Thankyou leetcode for providing such a great community.
All these are for software engineering internship positions.

Background:
Software Engineering Student graduating in Summer 22, and had done one internship with a local company as a fullstack developer. I started doing Leetcode since last summer where i used to spend alot of time learning the basic stuff and seeing some of the solutions while i used to be stuck. But I was trying to be super active while doing leetcode, atleast 2 questions a day. Once i did some good amount of questions, I started recognising the patterns and did 300+ problems (total). I started the intern hunt in july/august, but wasn't able to get a successful response till feb. But, i still kept on applying and doing the leetcode questions. I started learning some of the basic stuff around AWS and other front end frameworks to add it within my resume. I finished my hunt in March 1'st week with offers from Interactive Brokers, Salesforce, Amazon, Tesla.

Interactive Brokers | SWE Intern (Summer) | Connecticut | [offer]:
This was my very first offer, after trying for too long. There was 2 rounds of interviews after the online assessment.
1st Round: HR Behaviorial
2nd Round: In this, the interviewer asked me about my interest in trading firm company and a short intro which was followed by the technical, asking binary tree questions and array. He asked me the space as well as the time complexity for both the solutions. He asked me about the technologies mentione don my resume and some of the stuff about my projects. THis went upto 50-55 minutes although it was supposed to be. 45 mins.

He mentioned me that he will be happy to see me within his team while ending the interview call and I got contacted by the recruiter after a week almost where she extended me a verbal offer and an official offer leeter within next days.

Salesforce | SWE Intern (Summer) | Bay Area | [offer] :
This was my 2nd most offer, which consisted of 2 interviews after the online assessment. I took the online assessment sometime around August, and was contacted in Feb 2nd week with an email saying : interview opportunity at Salesforce from workday. i had a referral for this, but didnt got any team match since long due to which had to wait so long to complete the process. I was not even expecting salesforce interview at that moment but after seeing the email, I just pinged my recruiter back and tried to do the whole process within 6-8 days.
1st Round: Behaviorial along with Technical (based on resume) with the hiring manager
2nd Round: This was purely technical where the interviewer asked me 2 leetcode questions and grilled me on my resume. He asked me the leetcode question of serialise and deserialise the tree and building the tree with given inorder and preorder. I felt that i did pretty well within this interview after completing both the questions pretty quick as I did these questions few times. But, he asked me alot of stuff related to Java Programming in general followed by Kubernetes, docker, Spring Boot, along with relational and non relational database questiions. he asked me some sql questions as well but I don't rem them now. But, I made sure that whatever I am answering is correct or simply let him know if I am not sure about anything.

I did the final 2nd interview on Tuesday and was followed back by my recruiter on Friday with an verbal offer, and I was way happier to get this.

Tesla | SWE Intern | Bay Area (Remote) | [offer]:
I recieved the interview for Tesla 1st time in October for the Spring Co-op, as a fullstack developer with the energy team but was rejected at first after the hiring manager interview.
Then I recieved the interview with the vehicle team for Summer + Fall Software Engineering Postition, comprising of Backend and Testing mostly.
The process was quite simple where I had 2 interviews after the online assessment.
1st interview : Hiring manager on codility where he asked me to debug a graph question written in C++ followed by time and space complexities. I did the interview @4PM (EST) and recieved the next round call by my recruiter at night which was scheduled asap, as I mentioned him that I had few deadlines.
2nd Interview: This was way simpler than the first interview as that was more trivial graph question which needed to be debug. This was basically iterating over the graph in breadth first search and printitng the order while traversing and maintain the level as well.

I recieved the call from the recruiter the very next day letting me know that I passed the interview rounds and he will be sending me the offer soon. I followed him through the email and thanked him for all the process and helping me to finish it soon and decline the offer, as I recieved an offer from Amazon at that very moment, just 30 mins before doing the 2nd interview and was not willing to cancel the interview at the last moment and burning the bridges with them. hopefully, I will not be blacklisted and they may be able to get me in while I am looking for new grad opportunities with them in future.

AMAZON | SEATTLE/BELLEVUE | SDE INTERN (Fall) | [Offer]:
I was way happy to get the online assessment from one of the faang after cribbing for almost 6+ months. I applied to their summer intern posting in August 1st week, but didnt get the assessment till the 2nd week of Feb.
The process is very simple, where I had 3 online assessment followed by 1 interview:
1st Online Assessment : debugging
2nd Online Assessment: Coding (Anagrams (slightly different), KMP algorithm)
3rd Online Assessment: Work Simulation (Leadership Principle)
Interview :In this the interviewer first asked me leader ship questions for 10 minutes, which was followed with the technical interview. The question he asked me was not straight from leetcode, rather it was more of the design question (object oriented), where I gave him the answer using dictionary , arrays and using some sorting stuff, which he accepted it and told me to optimise some of the methods within the class I designed. He asked me to go down and copy the entire solution and make changes to it then, maybe because i was able to solve the question within few minutes (like 5 minutes). Here, I mentioned him the solution using binary search tree as well as the heaps. He wa satisfied with both the answers and aske dme if there is any other data structure which I can use, I told him that we can use treemap for this question but I am not sure as we don't have treemap in python.
So, we ended the interivew with 3 solutions fully coded, and I was not too confident as if that went great or not, because i was still thinking in mind that why I didnt used Java at the first itself.
After 3 or 4 days, I got an update from Amazon that I have been put it under waitlist and the summer season is coming to end, so if I am willing to add my name under the waitlist, do so within next 2 days.
I was happy that i cleared the interview, and this was just before my salesforce offer. So, I prepared hard for salesforce offer but suddenly as soon as i got salesforce offer, I recieved an email from amazon saying that the interview was inclined and if i am interested in summer/fall opportunities.
So, I straight away accepted Salesforce offer for Summer and mark my interest for Fall for Amazon and recieved a potential offer within next 3-4 days.

Intuit | Spring Co-op | Mountain View | [Reject] :
I started the process in August where I first recieved the karat coding test followed by karat interview and then a final interview.
Karat Coding : Graph involving topological sort
Karat Live Interview : I solved 2 questions in 45 minutes where one was Codomains question from leetcode and 2nd one was dynammic programming (longest common substring), but need to return the string instead of maxLength. I was very much confident after this, and was hoping for 30 mins final. Although I didnt get any updates after 3 weeks of this round and tried to get in touch with 2-3 recruiters and then was sent a generic email (rejection).
I was so much depressed after this and felt like being cheated, as even after solving the questions so good and well, i couldnt grab the final interview as I was in a need of 2 co-op blocks to be able to graduate from my school due to the requirements and intuit seemed to be a very good place with good work life balance.
After rejection, I was followed up with the team stating that they have a potential match within the team and they require me to start in Feb till AUg, this call was made to me when I went back home in Jan and recruiter left the voice mail and emailed me a day later.
I was so excited and took the final in next 2 days,
Final Interview : There was 2 interviewers where one was noting down all the stuff, where as other was interviewing me. He asked me values (intuit) for 30 mins along with my resume/ project/intro. This was followed with one technical question where the interviewer didnt provided me appropriate details for the question and I got stuck asking him questions for the first 10 minutes, but luckily i got the understanding of the question fter answering vague stuff for first 10 mins that It was a graph question where i need to take the input and just return the boolean seeing if the graph is connected at one vertex being able to reach to another vertex.
I solved the question, but we didnt ran the code, i wasn't confident enough on this code and asked him if I am on right track a frequent times and he mentioned that I am doing correct.
I was in a dicey situation that I might or might not get the offer after the interview and recieved a rejection on the 2nd day, although I was very depressed but the recruiter followed with me providing all the tips where i could improve and she mentioned that behaviorial was weakest in your case and needs more attention.

WayFair | Boston | SWE Spring Cp-op | [Reject] :
I did the online assessment in Novemeber and recieved the interview the very next day.
Interview : asked me to design a database kinda question (more of object oriented stuff), which was pretty easy. I solved the question but was rejected after this interview. I don't know what was the interviewer expecting.

Coinbase | SWE Intern (Backend Summer 21) | Bay Area | [Reject] :
In this, I had 2 interviews after the OA where
1st interview: HR interview screening us with the resume and explaining about the intern position and asking our backend/frontend interest.
2nd Interview :Based on the interest, I got to do the backend interview. The interview was for 60 mins but due to technical issues I started 10 minutes late, it was on the hackerrank where the interviewer explained me the question and asked me to think out loud for the first 15-20 minutes and I didnt coded anything till them. I gave her 3 solutions starting from naive to the best approach i could think of. I solved it using heaps for one of the part where i used min heap initially and for the second part I was just supposed to do the opposite using max heaps, so i made an assumption at that point which was not correct. I realised this when we were not left with any more time and i didnt googled it up even though the interviewer mentioned me to google if i want before the interview. But at the same time i even think that the interviewer wasn't interested in taking the interview as she was busy eating her lunch and their was continuous disturbance from her end. I got rejected the very next day and mentioned all this to my recruiter because I mentioned the point why the 2nd part was giving wrong answer to my interviewer at that time itself. But, she told me that she is sorry to hear such an experience but I can surely apply after 6+ months and she will be happy to re introduce me to the process again.

POSTMATES | Spring Co-op | Bay Area | [Position Cancelled] :
I did the codesignal where I solved all the questions and recieved the interview call. I was send a generic email that the position has been cancelled after few weeks of the survew asking interview dates.

EDIT 1 :

There are few questions: how i got soo many interviews and offers just in feb, like i went from 0 offers to good no. of offers in a week. I just kept on applying to the companies from july/august, while trying to solve leetcode at most of muy times. I use to do leetcode every weekend like 10 questions in fall as i was working in fall at a local comapny nearby (40hours/week). I was trying very hard but I don't know i wasn't able to get the interview calls at first and then even if i got some interview calls, I got rejected with them like INtuit where i was so much interested.

I mass applied everywhere to all the positions and kept on applying through linkedin /handshake/career connect (my univ job portal), and kept on doing the interviews even if it's small comapny or big one's as I realised that i was easily able to crack the technical interviews but was lagging somewhere while doing the behaviorial part. I did some mock interviews as well and started thinking out loud while solving the questions to be able to thoughfully talk about th eprocess in the interview while solving the questions. My journey for leetcode was quite long as i submitted alot of submissions and did 300 questions itself for the intern positions.

Although this has been quite rought and long recruiting season but I learnt alot and I had accepted the offer from Salesforce (Summer) and Amazon (Fall), and hope to work well within these dream companies :)

I will start the grind back again to look for fulltime opportunities starting in 2022 summer, but again I think we should just keep on doing the hardwork by solving the questions and don't worry if we are getting rejected as it's the part of the process. Because when i started last year I wasn barely able to pass the online assessment, but then i improved slowly and started getting rejected after final and then luckily luck played some role that i ended with the offers in hand after some time.

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