Education background: B. Tech from a Tier 3 college
Current Position: SMTS at a Virtualization Tech company with 10.5 years of experience
Conclusion: Offer - SDE2
Interview experience:
First of all, the entire process went on for close to 6 months. It is quite unusual because it wasn't about the number of rounds. The HR kept scheduling the interviews but the panel wouldn't join and the HR used to say the panel is very busy and would end up rescheduling. This kept on repeating for thoughout the first 2 rounds for months. So my memory is a bit fuzzy on some of the details.
Round 1: Coding + DSA
It was a problem of merging of store employee schedules. It was very similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-intervals/
- There was a bit of confusion regarding the input types as problem description and inputs were given in plain text. I managed to solve it and I remember there was a follow-up question about mutability as I was updating the result on the input List. The feedback was positive.
Round 2: System Design
The problem to Design a train booking system similar to IRCTC. The requirements were limited
- To search train journeys between a given source and destination
- Booking a seats on a train journey (emphasis was on handling concurrency)
- Cancel a booking
I stumbled in this round as I was a bit overwhelmed due to the limited time and didn't manage to approach the problem systematically, but kept at it and came up with an abstract design.
Round 3: Behavioural
The questions about strengths and weaknesses. Questions about hypothetical situations to gauge leadership and decision making.
I did fairly well in this round.
Introductory round with hiring manager
It was more of an interaction with the hiring manager and introductions.
It's likely due to my performance in the second round they decided to offer SDE2 role instead of SDE3
Compensation details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/5303258/tesco-sde2-bangalore