Round 1 - Online Assessment
Questions:
- Load maximum units on a truck (similar to Leetcode Problem) - Did it using a Greedy approach.
- A very mathematical problem which looked impossible. I have not been able to find it online. I still don't believe that I solved it.
Candidate's Approach
No approach provided.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 2 - DSA
Questions:
- First question was fairly easy. The only major optimization I did was to convert a O(n^2) solution to a O(n log n) solution by using an unordered set.
- You are given an array in which on each pass you remove an element at arr[i] if arr[i-1] >= arr[i]. You have to calculate the number of passes before the array becomes strictly increasing.
Candidate's Approach
I immediately tried coding the brute force approach which I successfully did. I then suggested some optimizations which were not the final answer, but the interviewer seemed satisfied by my brainstorming.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 3 - DSA + System Design
Questions:
- DSA question - In an array consisting of 1/0, find the number of palindromes of size 5.
- Design LRU cache (Only pseudocode).
Candidate's Approach
The interviewer was very friendly and helped me come up with the solution for the DSA question, which I successfully coded. I was well prepared for the LRU cache design, but I was a little stuck on the demand that the key and the value could be of dynamic datatype (using templates in C++). I managed to deal with it since it was just pseudocode.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 4 - Hiring Manager
Questions:
- Explain SOLID principles in detail.
- Example of when polymorphism violates Liskov substitution principle.
- What happens if we don't follow the Single Responsibility Principle?
- How to make a system scalable?
- What to do when our API has high latency?
- Idempotency handling.
- How to handle user login (followed by in-depth questions on JWT)?
- Why and why not table indexing?
- Discuss a feature I delivered from start to finish.
- Questions about a new Salesforce product I knew about.
Candidate's Approach
I was well prepared for this round, and it turned out to be my best round of all four. I felt fairly positive about the outcome.
Interviewer's Feedback
I received positive feedback for Round 2 and Round 4, but somewhat average feedback for Round 3. However, since for the position of MTS, DSA is prioritized over System Design, they decided to move forward with the offer.