Round 0: 30-Min Call
Questions: Discussion about the interview process & expectations.
Candidate's Approach
No approach provided.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 1: Screening (Eliminatory)
Questions: DSA Question: Given a 2D array [n*2] with [timestamp, value], aggregate values per minute. Leetcode medium level.
Candidate's Approach
Used HashMap (discussed alternative approaches like TreeMap, sparse arrays, and tradeoffs).
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 2: 2 LP + DSA
Questions: DSA Question: Reorganize String
Candidate's Approach
Used Priority Queue (Heap) for O(26log 26*n) ≈ O(n) time complexity. Knew the linear solution but didn’t discuss it, as I was not sure if that's correct.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 3: 2 LP + High-Level Design
Questions: System Design: Design Tiny URL. Discussion: Scaling, caching, DB design, URL encoding strategies.
Candidate's Approach
No approach provided.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 4: 8-12 LPs (Full LP Round)
Questions: Product Manager from a different team took this round. All my prepared LP examples got exhausted, so had to dig into my past work for more stories for the next rounds.
Candidate's Approach
No approach provided.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.
Round 5: 2 LP + Low-Level Design + 1 more LP
Questions: LLD Question: E-commerce API to fetch products for a category & its subcategories.
Candidate's Approach
Hiccup: Took too long to catch the hint for using Strategy Pattern for filtering.
Interviewer's Feedback
This round didn’t go that well; reason for rejection is this round.
Round 6: Deep Dive LP (3 LPs)
Questions: In-depth follow-ups on every story. Heavy focus on problem-solving in ambiguity.
Candidate's Approach
No approach provided.
Interviewer's Feedback
No feedback provided.