HashedIn 2024 SDE 1 Interview Experience -

It was a pool campus drive where 3-4 colleges came together to conduct the process. 600 students sat for the OA round. In the first week, the OA was conducted. We had to bring our own laptops to the venue. There were 4 questions: 2 easy, 1 medium, and 1 hard. I solved all of them. They had hidden test cases, and you could only run them during the final submission. So, we had to check for the proper complexity by looking at the constraints properly.

The interview was scheduled for the next week. I knew I would get shortlisted. Initially, our interview was supposed to be on another university campus (pool drive). At the 11th hour, it changed, and we came to know it was happening on my own campus.

First Round - I was asked to introduce myself, talk about my projects, etc. I was given the question: "You will be given two strings consisting of characters 0-9. You will have to add both the numbers. (Note you will not be able to typecast the strings to int or long, as the strings might be large and might not fit in 32-64 bit numbers)." I tried to explain the logic to the panel, and then thought I would start coding. But one of them told me to code first and then explain the logic. I wrote the code and did the necessary tasks.

He then modified the question to require multiplying both the numbers. Again, it was a breeze. I broke the second string into multiple parts and used the addition function I wrote earlier to implement the logic. I dry-ran the code. If the numbers were "123" and "23", then you needed to traverse the numbers from the back to multiply them. So, to avoid complications, I reversed both strings and started the operation. The interviewer, I feel, didn’t follow the logic and initially thought I was on the wrong path. We had a bit of a formal argument, and then we both were on the same page.

I was asked about JWT and its underlying principles, what cookies are, OAuth, and other questions from my resume. This round was a breeze. I was able to answer all the questions except one, which was regarding an encoding format of the JWT token by default.

Then I had to rush to another interview for another company at their office around 6 km from my campus (Infosys Specialist Programmer). Experience will be updated here.

I told my placement manager to delay the second round as late as possible. I knew I would get selected.

I came back from that interview on an Uber Moto. I paid the driver 20 rupees more as he drove me far inside my campus (outside motos were not allowed inside the campus).

Second Round - Both panelists seemed impressed with my resume. I could tell from their faces. The round started with a DB design question. I was asked to design an e-commerce platform DB. They gave me a bunch of loose sheets and a pen. I had to come up with all the tables (e.g., customer_details, product_category, pricing, supplier_data, etc.). I established relationships between them (one-to-many, primary_key, foreign_key, etc.). I drew a lot of boxes and lines. I had to normalize the tables. He modified some of my logic and came up with questions like whether table-A was required, as there were overlapping attributes present in other tables. I changed some of the table structures and argued that some tables, even with redundant data, must remain, as normalizing the tables extensively could result in very complex queries and might take longer when fetching data. He agreed.

After we were happy with the diagram, he started asking questions like how to fetch the name, email, and list of orders for the last 4 days at a residential address from the platform (just an example). I remember he tested me with 5-6 queries. (Your SQL skills should be strong to perform well in this round. You will not be asked anything you haven’t read in DBMS, but the joining operations will be very complex. Keep your confidence stable and go ahead.) This round lasted about 40 minutes. Then he jumped to DSA. I don't remember the exact question, but it was related to the Next Greater Element. He created a story, and as he made me understand the test case, I immediately realized it involved a stack. However, he copied the test case wrong in one position later on (He didn't dry-run the entire test case). He expected me to come up with an n^2 approach, but as I knew I had around 10 minutes, I jumped straight to the stack approach. After writing the code, as I was checking the test case he provided, I found that one of the values was wrong. I told him that I felt the value he provided at that position was incorrect. He told me it wasn’t (lol). I then argued formally and made him look up the question from his laptop. Both of them started smiling immediately, and I knew it was wrong. He told me it was indeed incorrect, and then the other panelist told me to complete the remaining test case. Both of them already knew I was confident with DSA as initially I saw them pointing to my DSA achievements on my resume. Again, this round was a breeze.

I had to wait for about an hour.

Behavioral Round - Believe me, this is going to be one of the toughest rounds among all three you will come across as a fresher. The questions were highly tricky, like "We offer around 9 LPA. Tomorrow, if another company offers you more, what would you do?" You can either go with honesty or take the "money is not everything" route. Initially, I went with the second route, but then they got me with more complex and moral questions in the end. I then decided to keep it raw and answered according to my own personality. I would advise you to keep it honest, as if you take the other route, there is a very high chance you will be caught in a different harsh environment later in the conversation. They also asked me, "We saw your performance and feedback; how are you still unplaced?" (lol). I told her it was because of my 12th marks and had to clarify further. They asked me about my family, home location, and views about shifting to another location for work. She also told me that I could transfer to an office near my home location after converting to full-time.

Finally, the result was announced after another 1 hour or so. 5 of us received intern + FTE offers, and 3 received intern offers. (All offers were converted to FTE after the intern period). Out of the 600 who appeared for the OA, 30 were interviewed, 8 were selected, and I was one of them.

I would say the interview process, the panelists, and the HR staff were extremely good. I had a very, very good experience. One of the best companies to join as a fresher.

Thanks.
Peace.