Applied through google form circulated on Linkedin.
Background:
- 5 YOE working in current product based startup
- Current CTC: ~58 LPA
- Reason for change: Got bored in same company. so, passively looking for better offers.
- Prep: Did some dsa and diagram drawing practice on excalidraw.
Round 1: LLD Round(Interviewvector)
- Qus: Design Hotel Booking System
- Covered all FR, NFR, Classes, DB schema, API Design and Design Patterns(Decorator, Observer)
- Discussed topics like concurrency, locks
Self Feedback: Interviewer gave general feedback that everything is good just more OOP's principles can be applied.
Recruiter Feedback: Called same day after 4-5 hours and told feedback is very good.
Interview Exp: Although it is third party but panel is good and collabarative.
Round 2: HLD Round(Interviewvector)
- Qus: Design URL shortner
- Discussed about FR, NFR, Estimation, Core API's, High level Microservice, Database architecture, caching, Network layer, Confilcts, Replication and many other topics.
- Drawed whole architecture on excalidraw
Self Feedback: Best round as HLD is my forte, interviewer was impressed and told HR will reach out for next rounds.
Recruiter Feedback: Called same day told feedback is strong.
Interview Exp: panel is super cool and collabarative.
Round 3: HLD Round(Zepto interviewer working as EM there)
- Qus: Design Calendar(modified version of google calendar)
- Discussed about FR, NFR, Estimation, Core API's, High level Microservice, Database architecture, caching, Network layer, Confilcts, Replication and many other topics.
- Drawed whole architecture on excalidraw
Self Feedback: Round was good interviewer was happy in end and told design is good. Only thing for self feedback is intro discussion took too much time(25 mins) and then have to rush on design part.
Recruiter Feedback: Called same day after 4-5 hours and told feedback is very good.
Interview Exp: panel is good but cross questions are not in that depth compare to R2 HLD round.
Round 4: Hiring Manager Round(Zepto interviewer working as VP of some vertical)
- General intro and projects discussion only.
Self Feedback: Not able to conclude as it is non technical and interviewer was not giving any pointer towards far accept/reject.
Recruiter Feedback: HM rejected with feedback current company is small and told he tried to convince HM that it is good comapny but he is not accepting.
Interview Exp: Okish round!!, it can be more interactive from other side.
Overall Feedback: Rejected
Recruiter Exp. : Recruiter is very good and properly communicating most of times. Even said he will refer me to his friends hiring for similar roles.
Lesson learnt: This was first interview after last 4 years and landscape is pretty much changed. Being honest is not gonna work mostly in case of Managerial rounds as these days people are used to listen madeup structured content which is far from reality and very few has skills to differentiate. Current company have valuation of around $600M(not unicorn but have multiple profitable verticals and expanding carefully by not burning much) and on scale perspective some of components in my current company have 5000X more traffic then the QPS mentioned by HM but maybe my presentation of same is not that good.
