Interview Experience

YOE: 2.5

OA:
CodeSignal, solved 1,2,4 problem and did not solve 3. Was enough to pass

Phone Screen:
LC 269, was able to solve, passed to on-site in 2 days.

On-Site

I. Bar Raiser DSA:
LC 564, was able to solve, explained my solution and interviewer kept asking follow-ups until the end of the interview, seemed like he was trying to push till failure, but it did not happen.

II. HM Round:
Was scheduled with a TPM, shared negative experience stories from my current company using CARL framework to show how I was acting in those situations. They emphasized on collaboration, asked questions to see how I collaborate with the team and make sure I am a team player. Was also asked how do I handle overburn in my team and how do I stay afloat myself when times are stressful.

III LLD:
I was expecting a Machine Coding round, so was working through a bunch of java patterns and template problems such as parking lot, but I was not asked any of that. It was just another DS round with LC230 similar question. I was able to solve and interviewer was very friendly and supportive. Sounded like he wanted me to pass and geniuenly gave me an easy problem with medium follow-up, so it was a reaonable difficulty. I was definitely lucky on that one.

IV HLD:
Design Restaurant Recommendation System based on your location. Some backend Tech Lead was conducting an interview and he was very knowledgable. The initial requirements were very easy so I designed in <10 minutes, but then we decreased the latency requirement and things got more interesting. After high level design with optimizations was designed based on various regions, cachings, shardings, he asked me to explain geohashing to someone who does not know about it. So I talked about quad trees and geohashing, DB indexing and various tradeoffs I was studying for using "HelloInterview" and "Jordan has no life" videos.

Recruiter got back in 3 days or immediately after interview pannel meeting concluded with strong hire from all interviews.

I received the initial package TC 310k Y1 and 270k Y2.

Negotiated and in a week finalized TC 335k Y1 and 310k Y2.

Overall, I felt like interview was a reasonable difficulty, everyone was very friendly and wanted me to succeed. Interviewers very very diverse.

AMA