Status: 4 years of experience
Position: SD-2 at a Product based company
Location: Bangalore, India
Date: May 2021

Pre-interview:
Recruiter came across my profile via Instahyre and contacted me. Mentioned in the call itself, that the level will be based on interview performance.

Interview:
Total: 3 rounds

• 2 Problem solving
• 1 Hiring manager

Note: For problem solving rounds, have to code it in an IDE of our choice and expectation is to have a running code with optimal complexity which will be tested with unit test cases.

Round-1: Problem solving - 1 hour

1. https://leetcode.com/problems/add-binary - Came up with the approach for optimal solution, discussed it with the interviewer and able to code it pretty fast. Missed an edge case, was able to fix it after the interviewer pointed it out. Able to successfully run the code with unit test cases.
2. Distance-closest-zero-every-element (present in G-F-G) - Came up with a sub-optimal solution, but struggled to find the optimal solution. So interviewer gave a hint. After that, discussed the approach for the time optimal solution with the interviewer and able to code it pretty fast without any bugs. Able to successfully run the code with unit test cases. Also discussed about how to optimize the space complexity.

Round-2: Problem solving - 1 hour

1. https://leetcode.com/problems/spiral-matrix - Came up with the approach for optimal solution, discussed it with the interviewer and coded it pretty fast, but unit test cases failed for some inputs. Knew that I messed up in the loop stopping criteria, but was not able to code it properly during the interview.
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/house-robber/ - Came up with the approach for time optimal solution, discussed it with the interviewer and coded it pretty fast without any bugs. Able to successfully run the code with unit test cases. Also discussed about how to optimize the space complexity.

Round-3: Hiring manager - 1 hour

1. Discussion about my roles and responsibilities in my current company
2. Went deep dive into a project that I've worked in my current company. This went for nearly 40 minutes.
3. Common behavioral questions like why are you looking for a job change, what motivates you to come to work etc.

Post-interview:
Recruiter contacted me after two days stating I have cleared the interviews, asked me to provide the salary slips for starting the offer process. When the offer came, was pretty disappointed to know that I have been downleveled to SDE-I.

As the TC is tied to a level, the given offer is just a small percentage increase in my base salary along with ESOPs. Tried to negotitate the base, but to no avail. Rejected the offer after a week.

Learnings
HR stated the reason for downlevel was not having pure software development experience in my initial years (I started in Data science field and moved to SWE). But the reason maybe because I didn't clear the interviews with flying colors.

Overall it was a good learning experience with respect to the interviews. The interviewers were super nice and helpful, gave hints when stuck at some point and the interactions were more casual which helped me immensely during the interviews.

Compensation details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/1261350/Zendrive-or-SDE-I-or-Bangalore-or-May-2021-Offer