Role- SDE-1
Experience- 8 Months (Non-tech role)

Gave OA in March which contained 2 medium-hard DSA problem and work-style simulation, recieved Hiring interest form in April and then Onsite round was scheduled in BLR.

Round-1 (Technical-Onsite)

Interviewers introduced themselves and asked one LP question, which was about a time when you exceeded expectations

Then a Medium level DSA problem was asked:

Given an array of size n and an integer k, give minimum swaps to make this array k-distinct

• Discussed the approach, and dry run on an example
• As time was limited started writing the code on a paper
• Discussed the optimized approach using priority queue
• Discussion on time-complexity, space-complexity of the solution and some discussion around time-complexity of hash-maps

This round went for around 50 minutes
After lunch round 2 was scheduled

Round-2 (Technical-Onsite)

Interviewers introduced themselves and told that this round will focus on code maintainability, I was not aware of it as I expected another DSA round

Problem Statement: Given a log with different levels: INFO, DEBUG, ERROR, MESSAGE. Build a system which can handle and print these logs, consider a stream of logs are there.

• Tried different approaches using hashmaps, linked-list
• Explained my thought process
• Wrote some class structure and code

I was not able to complete the code and interviewer was also not satisfied, Correct approach was Chain of responsibility Pattern, which I didn't know

A LP question which was based on Ownership was asked.

After 2 weeks round 3 was scheduled

Round-3 (HM Round-Virtual)

Interview started with a discussion on Gen-AI and how I use it in my day-to-day work

• A time when LLM gave me wrong output
• How I verify agents output
• Explain How you will work on a feature from start to end using agents

After this 1 DSA problem was asked which was surprisingly
MERGE INTERVALS
Typical LC problem

1 Follow-up: INSERT INTERVAL
Another follow-up: A stream of intervals are coming at you which data-structure will you use for this?

Interview ended with my question

After 3 weeks Bar-Raiser was scheduled

Round-4 (Bar Raiser-Virtual)

Interviewer was a SDM with 7 YOE, This round was purely non-technical

He asked 7-8 LP questions which was based on Ownership, Exceeded Expectation, Have Backbone, Invent and simplify, Deliver Results

• Tell me a time when you had a disagreement with your manager
• Tell me a time when you dealt with a crictical feedback
• Tell me a time when you exceeded expectations

I prepared 8 LP stories for this and practiced them throughly

Verdict
Although I wasn't selected but this loop interview was really a learning experience for me.
I hope this helps you to get some insights about the process

Keep Grinding!!