Status: SDE-1 at a Fintech Unicorn. Graduated in June . 1.6 YoE
Position: Member Technical Staff / IC2 / SDE-2
Location: Bengaluru, India
Recruiter reached out on Linkedin, the manager was acting enthusiastically so I accepted the call.
Technical Screening - Jan 2nd Week
- Asked a Medium Leetcode Question (4 Leetcode contest points)
- Was asked about Master-Slave Architecture
- Had a detailed discussion around my college project (Because my project was impressive)
- Had enough time, so was asked another Leetcode Easy-Medium Question (3.7 contest points)
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Passed the screening round and the recruiter scheduled 5 Loop Rounds on the last 3 days of January
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Round 1 with PMTS
- Asked a standard Leetcode Medium-Hard Question (Won't share the question due to no NDA policy)
- Was asked a complex SQL query
Overall Experience: The interviewer was super friendly. I was able to solve the DSA question with ease, and for the SQL query, I also solved it easily but made a minor mistake which the interviewer rectified.
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Round 2 with SMTS
- Was asked a standard Leetcode Medium question (4.5 contest points)
- Was asked some design principles at a definition level. I am not good at remembering terminologies, rather I was expecting application based, so I messed up this part of the interview.
Overall Experience: The interviewer kind of disliked competitive programmers. However, I somehow managed to appease the interviewer by being humble even when he wanted to prove my inferiority as a competitive programmer.
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Round 3 - Managerial Round
- Had an in-depth discussion about the project that I am working on at my current organization.
- Was asked a Hard Leetcode question. I was able to solve it pretty fast.
- He then asked a follow-up based on coding principles, which I somehow gave a 50-50 answer
Overall Experience: The manager was super humble. He gave a detailed structure on what the team does and all.
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Round 4 - with an SMTS
- Was asked a standard Leetcode Easy Question.
- Was asked a follow-up which was to optimize the space in the previous problem (Leetcode Medium)
- Asked questions on OOPs principles
Overall Experience: Went superb
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Round 5 - with an PMTS (Bar-raiser round)
- Was asked behavioral questions
- A simple problem, was just asked to explain the approach
- Business and Tech questions related to my current organization project
Overall Experience: Went well
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Conclusion: The recruiter called and confirmed that I have cleared the interviews.
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Notes: (Copied)
- Had a nice interview experience with all of the team members.
- Communication is the key in technical interviews and therefore keep communicating your ideas to the interviewer so that the interviewer doesn't lose you in the middle. They are only looking for the reasons of hiring you, so they will help you until you allow them to.
- Before coding any question, always illustrate your approach to the interviewer and once they're fine, start coding. Illustrating how your code works before submitting using a dry run is always a +1.
- Even if you do encounter a bug after running, make sure to be quick and explain why the bug existed in the first place, as this only goes to show your bug finding skills.
- Try asking quality questions from the interviewers towards the end of the interviews when they ask you if you have any questions. This shows you're actually willing to join the organization.
Notes: (MINE)
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