At And T

Role: Software Engineer

College: Not Specified (High school graduate, no college degree)

Interview Date: August 2019

Interview Type: Full-Time (On-site)

Result: Offer

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 2 rounds (Phone Screening, On-site)

Topics Asked: Technical screening (behavioral & technical), technologies (Docker, AWS, Kubernetes, Mongo, MySQL), programming languages (Java, C++, Golang, Node.js, React, Angular), pros/cons of languages, architectural questions (scalability, CDN's/caching, optimizing, load balancing), Data Structures, Algorithms.

Experience:

This candidate, a high school graduate with 2 summer internships and 2 years of full-time experience, interviewed for a Software Engineer position in Los Angeles. The overall experience was described as professional and efficient.

Round 1: Behavioral & Technical Screening Phone Call
Details not provided in the snippet, but it was the first step.

Round 2: On-site Interview
The on-site interview involved meeting with three software engineers.

Questions Asked:

• What technologies are you familiar with? (Discussed Docker, AWS, Kubernetes, Mongo, MySQL, etc., with specific questions about each).
• What programming languages are you familiar with? (Mainly discussed Java, C++, Golang, Node.js, as well as React and Angular; specific questions about pros/cons, quirks, and trivia of each language).
• Architectural questions: How do you handle scalability problems with limited hardware capacity? (Discussed using CDNs/caching, optimizing slowest parts of the software, and load balancing).
• Whiteboard Part (Coding Question): A variation of "Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock" (#121 on LeetCode), but with "buckets of corn" instead of stocks. The candidate initially found an O(n^2) solution and optimized it to O(n) on the whiteboard.

The candidate received an offer and found the office and team to be great.