OLA | SDE 1 | Pune/Banglore

Anonymous User
5201
Ola Cabsinterview experienceinterview questionInterview

Background
Education: B.tech in Computer Science (Tier 3)
Years of Experience: 1 year
Prior Experience: Startup

Applied through referral

Online Test on Moocha
For some reason, I got the online test link and round 2 invitation at the same time.
The total duration was 60 mins

  • SQL(5 mins)
    There was an easy SQL question based on join where schema was given and you have to find the max

  • 3 Coding questions(55 mins)
    Questions were of easy-medium difficulty.
    Q1 based on LIS
    Q2 easy array manipulation
    Q3 DP based question

NOTE: For some reason, there was an option to choose between Java and python only :(
I am used to solving questions in c++.
Solved 1st, 2nd fully

Round 2 - PSDS (Problem-solving and data structure)

3 questions were asked and the round was over in 45 mins

  1. Given a list of songs how will you play them randomly(shuffle) such that no song repeats?
    I came up with a brute force solution using random number generation.
    Follow up - Can you do in constant space?
    after some hints I came with a solution:
    Let us say we have n songs
for i from n to 1
	r = random number from (1 to i)
	play the song
	swap the song with ith song

She asked me to code and I forgot the syntax of random in c++ so for the sake of brevity I created a pseudo-random generator using time package :D

  1. find the set consecutive numbers summing up to n.
    Example for target 9: print [2,3,4] and [4,5]
    I started with the formula that Sum = n*(n+1)/2 and tried to explain how we can use it here.
    The interviewer interrupted and asked for brute force instead. So I explained brute force and gave few optimizations to that.

  2. A question based on leetcode famous area under histogram with slight variation
    I explained the brute force first. The interviewer asked to optimize using some other data structure
    I explained the stack-based solution.
    Follow up: How you identified stack can be used?
    I explained about the monotonic stack.
    I was not asked to code this one

Apart from that, I was asked why I want to leave my current org?

Round 3 - Design round
Here I was asked to design movie tickets booking site/app similar to book my show.
The rest of the questions were just follow up on my approach. It was a very high-level discussion with no code involved.

Round 4 - Hiring Manager round

Due to some error on their end, 2 interviewer joined at the same time and I became so confused. The interviewer was very friendly, he introduced himself and made me comfortable.

  • I was asked to introduce myself? What all projects I have done? He went through my resume and thereafter that rest of the interview was me explaining my projects and previous work.

  • Since I remembered every detail on the projects including class names ;p the interviewer was impressed and just kept asking what other things I enjoy doing and my hobbies.

  • When there were 15 min left I was asked a problem which was a variation of DNF sort. Interviewer asked why we are using 3 pointers here and idea behind DNF sort.

I got the mail today that they are moving forward with my candidature and I am awaiting an offer.

What to expect in terms of work culture and work-life balance? I am leaving my current company because of a poor work-life balance.

Declined as I got a better offer.

Comments (3)