Salesforce | AMTS | Reject

Online Assessment

Questions: 3 coding questions. Solved all 3 successfully.

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Round 1 (Technical - Code Pair)

Questions:

1. Rainwater trapping problem.
2. A variation of Q1.
3. An easy implementation question.

Candidate's Approach

I solved and explained all the questions before time. The interviewers mentioned that solving Q1 and Q3 was the expectation and appreciated my handling of Q2 as well.

Interviewer's Feedback

The interviewers appreciated my handling of Q2 and noted that I met the expectations for Q1 and Q3.

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Round 2 (Techno-Manager)

Questions: Given an array, perform k operations. In each operation, pick any element -> divide by 2 -> put the ceil value back into the array.

Code:

priority_queue<int> pq;
for (int num : arr) {
    pq.push(num);
}

for (int i = 0; i < k; i++) {
    int top = pq.top();
    pq.pop();
    int newValue = ceil((double) top / 2);
    pq.push(newValue);
}

int sum = 0;
while (!pq.empty()) {
    sum += pq.top();
    pq.pop();
}

return sum;

Discussion: He asked me to handle edge cases specifically n == 0 and k == 0. I pointed out the input constraints (1 ≤ n, k) but still handled those cases. I don’t think he noticed me pointing it out. He kept asking me about time complexity; I said O(N+K * log(N)) but he wasn’t satisfied even though I tried explaining multiple times. I explained how push and pop in priority queue would be of log(N) but he said it should be N * log(N). He said I was missing addition of extra O(N) for the case where k==0 and wasn’t happy when I told him how worst complexity calculation works. He then just told me to run the code and it passed the test cases.

Candidate's Approach

I explained the solution using a priority queue (max-heap) and also wrote the solution in words step by step. I also explained how heaps work.

Interviewer's Feedback

He felt I could have explained the solution better and expected a better time complexity.

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Managerial Round

Questions: Behavioral topics like "Why Salesforce?" and "What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced?" I felt my responses lacked nuance for the situational questions like "If a bug appears during an RCA for a project you worked on with a colleague, how would you go about it?"

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Verdict: Rejected.
Take-away: Low hiring bar also means low IQ interviewers.