Summary

I started doing leetcode by start of december and solved 700 leet code questions till date. I applied for multiple companies and get call back from [Facebook, Dropbox, InstacartLocal, Snapchat, Lyft] . All of them conducted telephonic rounds.

Current YOE : 10 years
Current TC : 260K

Facebook (Reject at telephonic)

Asked question related to grouping string similar to leet code problem : https://leetcode.com/problems/group-shifted-strings/
I was able to solve optimized solution by end after coding few non optimized solution. Got rejected because I believe interviewer was expecting to come to optimized solution in first pass and then probably wanted to ask another question. My advise to take few minutes and do problem solving before jumping to code and direclty code optimized solution.

Dropbox

Dropbox asked the question related to grouping files with similar content. Had multiple follow ups where file may not fit in memory.
Recruiter came back after few weeks that I did well but had to put candidancy on hold because of hiring freeze.

InstacartGoLocal

It was one question with 3 variations with simple implementation of hash map, and then a variation where to store versioned value in hashmap.
And after that another variation where is version does not exist then return most recent otherwise return the value at specified version.

Was able to solve all variations in time and interviewer seems pleased. But got a mail from recruiter that they are putting candidacy of hold because of hiring freeze.

Lyft

Interviewer asked a question in telephonic , similar to : https://leetcode.com/problems/water-and-jug-problem/ but with variation where to return minimum steps.

Was able to provide half solution becase on BFS and interviewer seems fine and got call for onsite.

For onsite , I had 4 rounds and one of the best experience so far. I will not disclose question for onsite because of NDA. I had two design rounds 1 laptop round which will classify as leetcode medium and leadership round. For laptop test, I practiced few prooblem in IDE by doing console IO and it helped me to solve problem in time.

For design round, questions was related to location search, and one system related to accepting payment for charity.

I got an offer from Lyft for L5.

Smartsheet (Offer [Declined])

Nice startup and had a great interview experience with them.
For telephonic they asked, one question to return the first character in string which is repeated and few questions related to my experience.

I got a call for virtual onsite next week and had five rounds with 2 coding, 1 leadership , 1 product management, and 1 design round.

For coding question one was easy related to string with follow up on how to handle unicode characters and few testing scenarios.
Another coding question was related to prioroty queue and follow up on how to handle scale where all data may not fit in memory.
Design round was related to develop some online system where multiple user can edit excel document.

Snapchat (Onsite cancelled)

Telephonic question was related on how to represent a sparse matrix and then support matrix addition. Interviewer had planned another follow up to support matrix multiplication but we went out of time after coding matrix addition and he mentioned it was anyway the bonus question.

I had onsite scheduled with snapcht but got cancelled later as they mentioned they have filled all positions.

Cruise (Onsite -Reject)

Telephonic question was related on finding a word in a matrix. I think I did well but, got complexity wrong. Passed for onsite.

Onsite had 5 rounds

• Coding : One question related to array which I solved using n*n using DP, but interviewer was looking for O(n) solution using some math trick. Was able to finish it with multiple hints from interviewer.
• Design : Design was related to building uber for self driving cars. I believe I did not did well. My mistake which helped me in subsequent interview was not to start from customer or UI. I draw few back end boxes and when interviewer prompted for data flow, thats where I realized some bozes do not have enough clarity.
• Behavioral : standard questions. I think I did well here.
• Coding: One question related to matrix traversal to count islands.
• Design: Asked to present design of one challenging project in past. Did not anticipated it and probably bombed it as I did not explained well. Second half was on design docker type infrastructure where developer can run job on cloud. Totallly bombed this again.

Google (L5 - Offer)

Straight away asked for onsite based on my experience. Had 5 rounds. Will not provide exact question because of NDA.

• Coding : One question related to DP. By now I have been very good in solving DP problem. This question is not on leet code but I did well here and this interview set the tone for other interviewes as well. Had 10 minute on clock to ask lot of questions back.
• Coding : One question related to finding longest chain of words. Some variation of a leet code question. Finished code when few minute was remaining on clock. In retrospective, I could have killed this question as I have done similar question in past. But went ahead with longer code base. But I think my continuous engamenent and clean coding practice with proper function/ variable name would have saved me here.
• Design : Standard question from grocking the system design. I had learned from my mistake in past and this time went systematic manner and even proposed phased launch with P0/ P1 functionalities. Was able to provide reasoning for every service + database. One thing that would have scored well in Google + Lyft interview was good answer on how new ids should be generated and provided in scalable manner. Interviewer seem impressed and whole design finished with in 40 mins with lot of time for me to ask questions.
• Coding + Test : One question where interviewer was not interested in IMPL but more on how I will test. I think I provided great set of test cases and then interviewer seem satisfied with overall strategy for testing.
• Behavioral : I could have done better here especially for some questions. But overall I think it went fine.

One thing I believe stand out in whole interview was asking very good questions back to interviewer and 4 out of 5 interviews finished with lot of time on clock and I asked lot of releavant questions back.