Role: Senior SDE
College: Not Specified
Interview Date: May 2022 - Jun 2022
Interview Type: Virtual Onsite
Result: Selected (Received the offer)
Difficulty: Not Specified
Rounds: 5 rounds
Topics Asked: Networking (Browser Request Lifecycle, TCP/IP, HTTP), Data Structures & Algorithms (Large Number Addition), System Design (Twitter database), Projects, Tech Stacks (React), Behavioral.
Experience:
The candidate had 4+ years of experience as a Software Engineer in a leading chip designing company. All rounds were virtual and held over Zoom. HR was friendly and supportive.
Telephone Round (1 hour)
- Technical questions mainly.
- "Explain full lifecycle of a browser request (What happens when you type "www.google.com" in a browser search bar and press Enter?)."
- "How to add and compare two 100-digit numbers if the computer register can store 10 digits at max?"
- Other questions about protocols, networking (TCP/IP, HTTP).
Machine Coding Round (2.5 hours)
- Develop a web application similar to Linux's "tail -f" command.
- A file on the server-side with potentially many lines of text.
- UI makes one request to fetch the last 10 lines. Subsequent updates to the file should append directly to the UI without refreshing.
- Write optimized code for efficient fetching of last 10 lines and real-time updates.
- Allowed to use internet and any programming language (candidate used Python with Flask).
Engineering Manager Round (1 hour)
- Questions about projects and tech stacks used (e.g., React versions and changes).
- Design the database structure for a simple version of Twitter with requirements: users can post tweets, see all tweets on homepage, see/update profile, see own tweets, like/retweet, see like/retweet counts, hold followers, follow/unfollow.
Director of Engineering Round (1 hour)
- Entirely a behavioral round.
- Deep dive into accomplished tasks, challenges, career goals, and future aspirations.
- Intense discussion on overall work and contributions.
HR Round (30 minutes)
- Mainly to gauge the candidate as a person and aspirations in life.
- A "chill round" with a relaxed interviewer.
Result: Received the offer four days after the last round.