Current Status

Company: One fo the top Investment Bank
Position: Associate (eq. SDE 2)
Location: Bangalore
Current YOE: 4yrs 10months

Interview Details

Company: Millennium
Position: Software Engineer
Location: Bangalore
Date: June 2024

A recruiter reached out to me over call directly. He shared with me the details of the job, asked few questions about me, expectations, etc.
In total, 1 OA (called caliper assessment) + 4 on-site interviews were taken.

Online assessment

Time limit: 1hr
Platform: caliperanalytics
Type: caliper assessment
Self-Verdict: Strong Hire

I don't remember much about this because I didn't make a note of it but it contained questions to test your cognitive abilities and personality, things like complete the 4th diagram, what whould do in thi ssituation, etc.

Round 1

Time limit: 45 min
Platform: Hackerrank, Webex
Type: DSA
Self-Verdict: Strong Hire

Several domain related theoritical questions was asked, many core java questions, some db related questions. I was able to answer most of the questions satisfactorily, however few answers were not fully accurate but not far either.
I was told this was a DSA round but the interviewer asked mostly Non-DSA questions.
Only 1 LC medium was asked: merge intervals.
I was able to code it very quickly with all test cases passed.

Interviewer seemed convinced, asked me if I had any questions for him, and closed the interview a bit early.

Round 2

Time limit: 45 min
Platform: Webex
Type: Project Discussion
Self-Verdict: Lean Hire

Entire interview revolved around project discussion. He asked me to pick some project to discuss in this interview. I picked some project from my previous company becuase I was more confident in it, did pretty well in that, and had a lot to tell because I had a lot of contributions in it. Instead, he asked me to pick some project from current company. So, I picked another one from current company.
He asked multiple questions around this project, objective, how you approached it, what was the tech stack used, what was the design finalized, challenges, database strategty used, db finalized, difference between some polling strategies I mentioned, etc.

After telling all of this, at the end of the interview, he asked "What was your contribution in this project?"

Overall I performed good and showed depth of knowledge, but not best.

Round 3

Time limit: 45 min
Platform: Webex
Type: Technical Discussion
Self-Verdict: Strong Hire

In this round, interviewer asked many project related questions, also asked some java related questions.
He then gave me situation (actually it was one of their backlog project), and asked me how would I approach it, what tech stack will I use, etc. He then asked me some question in an oppsoye way, something like "we should always "some language" because it is the solution for most projects? what is your thought on this?".
I think he wanted to check my presence of mind, and decision abilities, do I simply proceed with it just because a senior dev told me or do I question it, tell him why it is wrong and take a stand.
What he said was a wrong statement, so I denied his statement, of course politely, and told him why I don't agree with it, and told him instead what is the correct way of thing and told him how I would proceed to finalize the decision.
He seemed impressed.

Round 4

Time limit: 45 min
Platform: Webex
Type: HM Round
Self-Verdict: Strong Hire

In this round, some very very high status person joined alone which thank god I learned about him after the interview only.
He explained me the interview process and made it clear that this interview is going to be an open cnversation between me and him, as if like a meeting going between 2 millennium employees.
So, he started with a long intro about him, about the vision of the currrent division he is part of, I made sure I spoke in between saying something like "yeah I agree, because .... " as if I'm so senior (lol).
Every now and then he spoke about something, then asked "what do you think about it?", and I made sure I said somehting valuable and not non-sesnse, and definitely didn't answer in one line, I made sure I elaborated the answer anyhow because I knew he is trying to assess my communication skills as much as my knowledge, and checking How would I preform once I sit at the table with high status Millennium folks.

I performed quite well in this round, I could clearly see he was convinced.

Clearly, a hedge fund has too much of expectations.

Offer: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/6020541/Millennium-or-Software-Engineer-or-Bangalore