Phone Interview
Questions:
- 2 Leadership Principles (LPs) + Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) question: Top K Frequent Strings.
- The recruiter mentioned that the responses were great.
Candidate's Approach
The candidate felt confident during this round and adhered to the 30-30 rule, spending equal time on LPs and technical questions.
Interviewer's Feedback
The recruiter provided positive feedback, indicating that the candidate's responses were impressive.
Round 1
Questions:
- Leadership Principles (LPs) and behavioral questions only. The interviewer was likely a bar raiser, as he was not part of the team being interviewed for.
Candidate's Approach
The candidate found the interviewer to be calm, friendly, and engaging, allowing for a comfortable conversation. The candidate was surprised by the lack of technical questions but noted that the interviewer asked technical questions based on the candidate's LP answers.
Interviewer's Feedback
No specific feedback provided, but the candidate felt the interaction was positive and enjoyable.
Round 2
Questions:
- 2 Leadership Principles (LPs) + DSA question: Concatenated Words. LeetCode Link
Candidate's Approach
The candidate had not seen the question before and initially suggested using Trie and Dynamic Programming (DP) for an optimal solution but opted for a brute force approach instead. The candidate acknowledged difficulty in providing the time complexity but explained the space complexity.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 3
Questions:
- 2 Leadership Principles (LPs) + System Design question: Top 10 Viewers of YouTube/Twitch Stream.
Candidate's Approach
The candidate experienced a migraine during this round, which affected their performance. They presented a brute force architecture and discussed trade-offs and potential improvements, though they felt it was their weakest round.
Interviewer's Feedback
The interviewer did not provide negative feedback, but the candidate felt they may not have impressed the interviewer.
Round 4
Questions:
- Leadership Principles (LPs) behavioral questions only with the Hiring Manager.
Candidate's Approach
The candidate enjoyed the conversation and learned about the team's future plans. They were surprised by the absence of technical questions.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 5
Questions:
- 2 Leadership Principles (LPs) + Low-Level Design (LLD) question: Unix Search. LeetCode Link
Candidate's Approach
The candidate felt this round went well, describing the interviewer as cooperative and friendly.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Final Thoughts
The candidate received an offer after the interview process. The interviewers were impressed with the candidate's LPs and achievements, considering the system design solution acceptable despite not being optimal for distributed systems. They noted the candidate's potential and expressed that it was not worth rejecting them based on the system design performance. The candidate emphasized the importance of familiarizing oneself with system design tools like Excalidraw.