HR Call
The HR call involved some basic questions on time and space complexity. The questions were very basic. I was able to answer some of them, but since I hadn’t prepared well, I stumbled on a few. However, the HR was satisfied and decided to move my application forward.
Telephonic Screening (45 mins)
The interview started immediately with a sliding window problem.
Problem:
There was an array of fountains. Given two arrays, I had to return the safe places.
My Approach:
Explained the brute force solution in about 10 minutes.
Then moved on to the optimized approach, which involved:
Monotonic stack
Next greater / previous greater element concept
I was able to code the optimized solution, but it still had a bug, which I found while dry running.
Unfortunately, implementing the optimized solution took the entire time, and the interview ended before I could fully fix it.
I did not expect to hear back after this round since I couldn’t complete the optimized solution properly.
However, I received a call from HR informing me that I would move forward.
Interview Structure
HR informed me that there would be 3 rounds total:
2 Technical (DSA)
1 Googliness round
First Technical Round
This round went really well.
Question 1:
Problem was similar to Merge Intervals.
I solved it in 15–30 minutes.
Discussed time and space complexity.
Provided a complete working solution.
Since we still had time, the interviewer gave me another question.
Question 2:
An improvement over the first solution.
Required finding Maximum among Minimums.
I explained the optimal approach using a Deque in Java.
We discussed follow-up questions and edge cases.
The interviewer was satisfied and mentioned that we didn’t have enough time to code the solution, which I agreed with.
Second Technical Round
This was the worst round for me.
Problem:
Given start and end logs of RPC server events with timestamps.
Return true as soon as a server times out.
If no server times out after processing all logs, return false.
My Approach:
Implemented an optimal solution using a HashMap:
Track start events.
When an end event arrives, check if (endTime - startTime) > timeout.
However, the interviewer wanted a different approach.
I tried to discuss alternatives but couldn’t fully understand what he was expecting.
Later, I found out that the intended solution was:
Track all active RPCs
Use a LinkedHashMap to manage insertion order and timeouts efficiently
In the end, I could only explain my idea in pseudocode.
Overall, this round did not go well.
Googliness Round
This round went well.
I was comfortable with this format since my previous employer was Amazon, and I had experience with similar behavioral rounds.
Result
HR informed me that the feedback mentioned I did not use the right data structure in one of the technical rounds.
Because of this:
I may be asked to do 2 more rounds, or
My application may get rejected
Currently waiting for an update, but I don’t have high hopes.
