Morgan Stanley

Role: Software Engineer

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: Late 2022/Early 2023

Interview Type: Off-Campus

Result: Selected

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 3 rounds

Topics Asked: Debugging, Aptitude, Programming (Array, Graph), C++ Basics, Data Structures, Projects, HR (Teamwork)

Experience:

This off-campus interview experience from 2023 involved three rounds.

Round 1 (Online Test): This round had three sections.

• Debugging: Pretty easy with 7 questions, including fill-in-the-blanks or completing code. The IDE was slow. The candidate solved 6/7.
• Aptitude: A bit tricky for the given time.
• Programming: Easy questions based on arrays and very basic graph structures. The candidate solved all 3.

After 3 days, the candidate was informed of qualification for the first technical interview.

Round 2 (Technical Interview): Scheduled 3 days later, this interview was friendly and focused on C++ basics. The interviewer asked to find errors in a given C++ code snippet. A question similar to "Minimum Number of Platforms Required for a Railway/Bus Station" was asked: given employee arrival and departure times, find the minimum number of chairs needed. The candidate started coding but couldn't change their approach due to time constraints. Questions on overloading and smart pointers were also asked. No OS or DBMS questions were asked in any interview.

Round 3 (Technical + HR Round): This final round involved a detailed discussion about the candidate's most recent project on Elasticsearch and how to implement Elasticsearch in C++. Specifically, the interviewer asked about creating inverted indices, and the candidate proposed using maps and a linked list of documents. A discussion followed about the choice between linked lists and vectors concerning space complexity and insertion/deletion operations. The interviewer then shifted to HR questions, mostly based on teamwork experience.

The candidate received a call in 5 days confirming they passed the final round.