Previous Company: Fintech Startup, small size ~10 team members
**Location: ** Noida
Experience: ~3 Years

Interview Dates: 8-15 June 2022

Rounds:

1. Problem Solving(1 hr): Can't remember the exact question but it was a LeetCode medium. Was able to explain both brute force and Optimal approach. Was able to code the optimal approach in given time.
2. Code Review Round(1.5 hr): Two interviewers, one was senior engineer and another shadowing him. Was given a code repo to clone and setup. It was a mailing app to send notifications to clients written in Java. Basically, it needed proper refactoring which I gave comments on.
   The interviewers allowed me to go through the repo and write comments in a text file(locally). The interviewers went on mute. Before 30 minutes to the interview's end time. They asked questions on the scalability of the code. Will the app be able to scale to multiple notifications(~ 1k notifications from different users). Also, was asked to provide comments on error handling and failure scenarios of the java code. They asked to share the code review comments file with them after the interview.
3. LLD round(1 hr): Was asked to implement the move-forward and backward functionality of a browser. Which data-structures to use and why. I thought of using a doubly linked list which would refresh elements when a new page is loaded, otherwise there will be a current pointer pointing to the browse node that they were in, currently. Wrote the code of this, and was able to execute the same.
4. Hiring Manager Round(45 mins): I was asked to introduce myself. What have I worked upon. Behavioural questions such as elaborate an instance where you had conflict with a senior or team-mate, an instance where you found the task difficult and how did you resolve it. Strengths and weaknesses, and what plans or actions do you have to improve on both. This was a relaxing round with thorough discussion over work experience and interests, technical as well as non-technical.

Result:
Received offer. Had another offer from CoinDCX and PepperContent. Had a 30 mins discussion with the Director to negotiate the offer and learn more about the company and their business plan.

Thoughts:
The recruiter as well as HR were very accomodating about change in time. Was bit scared of the code-review round as there could be different depths on which comments could be given. Tried to avoid repititive comments, rather highlighted areas where same comment applies. HM and LLD rounds were critical in inclining me to CommerceIQs offer. The people taking the interviews were very friendly and asked questions in a non-interrogating way(have faced this in interviews from other companies). Their director was able to understand the concerns regarding the offer and able to pitch their in an exciting way. I know, I could have bar-gained by getting higher offer from CoinDCX(they wanted to setup a call with me and their SVP to understand their business), but I was happy with the company's work and getting little more hike or negotiating a lot did not make sense to me.

Also, I had 2 years of Amazon experience and the senior leadership at CommerceIQ is from Amazon, which provides familiar vision and principles in guiding the company.