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LinkedIn | Senior Software Engineer | Backend | Accepted

Round 1 [Screening]

Questions:

  1. A string is given like this [1[2,[3,4]]] and you need to return the result which is calculated like this 31 + 41 + 22 + 13 => 14, i.e 1 has multiplication factor (mf) of 3, 2 has mf of 2 and (3 and 4) has mf of 1 since they are at the deepest level. Needed to write the optimal code for this.
  2. Specific question not provided.
Candidate's Approach
  • Provided a solution with extra space initially but then modified it to use only recursion stack as extra space.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • Verdict: Strong hire.

Round 2 [DSA]

Questions:

  1. A backtracking problem.
  2. A binary tree Leetcode medium problem.
Candidate's Approach
  • Could not optimize the backtracking problem by myself.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • Verdict: Lean hire.

Round 3 [DSA]

Questions:

  1. Max Consecutive Ones III
  2. Minimum Window Substring
Candidate's Approach
  • Was able to solve both questions.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • Verdict: Strong hire.

Round 4 [Behavioral]

Questions:

Candidate's Approach
  • The question was open-ended, and the expectation was to take inputs from the interviewers and make solid assumptions for the system.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • Verdict: Strong hire.

Round 5 [Project Discussion]

Questions:

Candidate's Approach
  • The interviewer questioned every design choice, and in this case, the interviewer was not impressed with the project.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • Verdict: Lean hire.

Round 6 [Design Round]

Questions:

Candidate's Approach
  • Focus was on metrics collection and how to store them to optimize queries based on time and keywords.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • Verdict: Strong hire.

Round 7 [Misc Round]

Questions:

  1. Given a list of numbers and a 2D array which tells a relation whether number i knows number j or not by a[i][j] with 1 or 0, where 1 means i knows j and 0 means i does not know j, find the famous number out of the given input array.
  2. Specific question not provided.
Candidate's Approach
  • Initially used a stack to solve the first problem but was able to do it without any extra space upon request. The second question was a tree problem, but the details are not remembered.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • Verdict: Strong hire.

Overall Result

Compensation: Compensation Discussion