Hello everyone, I interviewed with Tower research capital, Gurgaon, India location. This was for Dev tools team

Application

• YOE : 9 yrs
• Got a call from a consultant company and they processed my profile

Round 0 - Hackerrank test

Had 4 questions

• UUID log search: Simple parsing program
• Ones groups: Matrix question
• Debug tree inorder traversal: Program implemented binary tree using nested maps and had some mistake, need to find and correct it
• Debug binary: Given a C binary, need to execute it and get some data. This required a linux machine to debug
  • Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  • Use strace command - will some path of config file looking for

Solved all of them, got email from recruiter for next round

All rounds are elimination rounds

Round 1(1 hour 15 mins)

• Resume screening
• https://leetcode.com/problems/roman-to-integer/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-smallest-element-in-a-bst/

Solved both of them, was asked for next round

Round 2(30 mins)

This round didn't completed, I had to stop the interviewer after half an hour
Interviewer joined 5 mins late and seemed to be in hurry

• Started with past experience - he wanted to know things I have worked on
• RDBMS scaling issues, how to handle, when to use NoSQL which is better..
• Then, he said - I will testing you on design skills and will be asking 2 question and you will have complete each in 20-25 mins
• Pasted below code snippet on hackerrank shared link

  class Task:
      def task(self):
   	   pass
  
   	def wait(self):
   		pass
  And asked me, can you quickly implement this - I asked what needs to be implemented? He said, task function will schedule a task and wait function will wait

I started implementing, he started interrupting a lot on each step - actually wanted me implement this in very specific way like don't create any additional class, ...

Once this was done, he extended the problem and said what if we have only 3 workers and tasks are coming continuously, how can we handle this? I mentioned, we can use a queue to handle this - he said can you implement this quickly. I implemented this, then he further extended the problem to something I don't exactly remember and asked me implement quickly. I started but I felt he was in hurry or trying build pressure by saying do it quickly multiple times. I told him everything can't be implemented quickly in an interview, I have given have lot of interviews and it is supposed to be a collaborative process - I won't be able to proceed further with this format. And it's fine, if I am not able to solve 2 questions you have came up with - rejection won't be an end of world for me. He started explaining look dude just chill, we has to grill the candidates, and if you are not liking this quickly thing, I won't say, take your time - now would you like to continue? I was not in a state to continue further so discontinued and informed recruiter to have a call, in half an hour she called along with that interviewer's manager and told me we have spoken to interviewer and would like to listen from you as well. I told them, then they asked if they want to reschedule this round, will I be interested? I said yes.

Round 3(1 hour)

This was with last interviewer's manager and it was kind of techno-managerial round, asked below questions

• Talked about my current work
• Why looking for change
• How would you implement your current project without using any public cloud
• Some RDMS related questions
• All questions derived from talks we did - like I explained something and he asked some question around that to test depth of knowledge

In last 5-7 mins, I asked questions around work they are doing and more about this role. He also talked about last interviewer and said - generally, he is very jolly person and sometimes we has to build pressure on candidate because we are dealing with finance and has to work under pressure. I wanted to talk more but he said, I has to join other meeting and hope you also has to start your work and disconnected.

Next day, I got rejection from HR and I replied and asked for any feedback - didn't heard back.

Takeaways

• I felt that they want to know more in short span of time like they book slot 1 hour slot but interview format is such that likely it will take more than an hour
  • In R1, first spending 15-20 mins on resume screening and then 2 algo question would likely take more than an hour
  • In R2, when I said this can be done using queue, he said can do this quickly but as I starting writing collections.deque ..., he figured out I know how to create a queue in python, he stopped me and gave another followup. I am sure, this round would also have taken more than an hour if I had continued
  • I think, instead of extending each round and asking candidate to hurry up, they can add an additional round(s) to make interview more smooth and complete on given time
• Feedback - not only this company but any which takes interview should share feedback to the candiate, if candidate is spending hours in the interview process they at least should get something to learn if rejected