Interview Experience at Flipkart for SDE1

Background:

B.Tech in CSE, Tier 2 college. 2023 Grad.
Previously SDE intern at Amazon (6 months).

Feb/March 2024
Applied off campus, don't really remember when or where, because I had sent out hundreds (maybe thousands) of applications over a few months. No referral.
I got an email saying I was shortlisted, and was scheduled for the Online Assessment.
It was an off campus hiring drive for 2023 grads in specific. Pretty sure I got shortlisted based off my internship.

Online Assessment: 3 Questions, 90 mins

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3: Given a list of strings, each string consisting of 1s & 0s. Given int X and Y. Find max number of strings you can take such that total count of 1s is less than X and that of 0s is less than Y.

I found the questions slightly difficult, especially because they were worded in a very confusing/poor manner. Managed to pass about 70% test cases overall.

PS/DS Interview 1: 45 mins

No theoretical questions. Introductions and straight into DSA. You are not required to execute code, but to explain all possible approaches in increasing efficiency, write code on whiteboard, debug it, dry run it, and consider the time/space complexity. Refer: Flipkart SDE Interview Guide on their website.

Question 1: This with a twist: nums[i] < nums[k] < nums[j], for i<j<k. Medium
Question 2: Split the array into N subarrays where each subarray has size 1 or sum at least K. 2 dimensional DP. Medium/Hard

PS/DS Interview 2: 1 hour

Question 1: Job Sequencing problem with Deadlines. Medium
Question 2: Hard

Hiring Manager/Culture Fit Round: 30 mins

Was more of a discussion than interview. Be well prepared so you know what qualities they're looking for, and how to show that you possess those.

Introductions
Why flipkart over other companies?
What do you like & dislike about flipkart app/website?
Situational Questions - what would in do in __ situation.
What feedback did your previous manager give you?
What would you change about your previous company?
What would make you want to quit/leave a job?
etc.

Tips / Tricks / Advice that helped me:

• The type of questions you ask helps them determine how good your basics and skillsets are - practice this. Do mock interviews with your friends.
• In DSA rounds don't rush. Take your time, explain step by step. I like to start off by writing the input, output, and constraints in my own words, as soon as I read the problem. Writing code only to realise you had read the question wrong is the cardinal sin of leetcode style interviews.
• Explain your thought process, the observations you make, the methods you eliminate, the data structures you consider (and pros and cons of each). Hypothesise out loud.
• You can't get through by memorizing code/algorithms, even if you do a thousand. You have to be able to visualise the solutions - focus on this when you do leetcode, understand WHY something works, and when to use what.
• I had done about 100 problems out of NeetCode 150 prior to the OA. In the 4 days between OA and Interview 1 I completed Striver's list. I think you have a decent shot at the interviews if you understand every concept in Striver's list.

Other Thoughts & Feelings:

Interview process was quite rigorous. Much harder than Amazon's intern interview.
All the interviewers were very nice people - well spoken, encouraging, explained what they expected of me, were happy to answer my questions, and allowed for me to make mistakes and catch and fix them. None of them spoke down to me (many startup founders did in previous interviews).
The entire process was very fast. Interviews were all on continuous days, starting 4 days after the OA. Got the result on the same day of HM round.