Google | L4 | Bangalore | May 2022 [Reject]

Current: SDE2 at a Leading AdTech
Experience : 4 Years
Location: Bangalore

Mode of Application: Recruiter contacted on LinkedIn.
Rounds: Phone screen + 3 Onsites (all DSA). No Desgin rounds.

Process:

	Recuriter contacted on 25th March, asked for 1.5 months of prepration,
	
	Phone screen(03/05) :  
				A image represented in a quadtree which contains areas of black,white and internal nodes. 
				An internal node can further be divided into black/white/internal node. Given a quadtree find out the percentage of black nodes in the tree.
				Example:

image

Solved it using level order traversal. Resolved bugs on my own during dry run. Overall, it went well.

	Onsite-1(19/05): 
				It is similar to move zeroes to right in array with a twist. Solved it in O(N) time and space, used 3 for loops. 
				After lot of follow ups, brought it down to constant space and 2 loops. Interviewer asked to do it in one loop.
				I was exhausted at this point, could not do it, interviewer explained the approach. It's already one hour at this point.
				Bonus question: Given a 2D array with 0s in few places, fill it with integers and in a uniformly random fashion. 
				Explained O(n2) and then tried to optimise it using Fisher-Yates algorithm. 
				The bonus question and the follow ups of 1st question are all only approaches, no coding was asked. 
	
	My judgement: Lean hire to hire.
	
	Onsite-2(20/05): 
				Given an array of +ve and -ve numbes, return the max product of length k. (You can pick in order, need not be contigious). 
				Gave an n2 solution. Could not optimise it. Follow ups on refactoring code, writing test case and what would I do differently if I'm solving this problem in workplace.
				I blew up this round. And the interviewer constantly interrupted me, 
				There was lot of time just with awkward silence just bescasue he's taking notes, which is not really fair. 
				I was nervous like hell throughout the whole round.
				
				Note: After the interviwe I realised this can be solved in O(nLogn).
	
	My judgement: No hire -> Lean hire.

	Onsite-3(23/05): 
				The same exact question: https://leetcode.com/problems/the-earliest-moment-when-everyone-become-friends/ . 
				Moreover, the timestamps also sorted up front. 10mins of Java questions related to hashing and GC. Explained the logic using Disjoint-Set union, interviewer seemed satisfied. 
				In the middle of discussion, he asked what if I want to expose the DSU class and make it available for clients to use it.  
				Wrote most of the code, and DSU(fully optimised) is such a pain in the a** for the length of it. 
				Stuck at how figure out at which point the graph is totally connected. 
				Tried to figure in different ways how to determine the connectivity of the graph. 
				Interviewer kept repeating modifiying the DSU class (which could be really tricky) and I was reluctant to do it. 
				
				I've solved this problem multiple times before with different follow-ups, but screwed up in the interview.
	
	My Judgement: No hire.
	
	Final Result(01/06):  Reject
	
	Foot Note:
			
			Overall, I've had one of the easiest interviewes compared to all to others on LeetCode. But I still managed to screw up. 
			I understood where I was lacking and I know I'm usually super nervous during any interview. Try to keep your cool, it might help a lot. 
			And if you're lucky, interviewers will want to take more time for the interview which could really help. 
			I was devestated when I know I could've solved them easily, but now there's nothing I can do about it. 
			All the sleepless nigths and early mornings was in vain.
			And one more thing which could help is, take atleast 2 rounds or if you're ok with it take all rounds on the same day. 
			The gap which I had between rounds drove me crazy. 
			It is most certainly not required to solve crazy amount of problems, all you need is understand the basics clyster clear.
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