Warner Brothers Discovery

### Online Assessment (OA) Initially, I gave the online assessment. It had around 25 MCQs—I don’t remember the exact number, but it was somewhere around 20–25 or possibly a little more. The questions were mostly basic, covering topics like basic mathematics, binary search, sorting algorithms, DSA, OS, and other basic CS fundamentals. The test was conducted completely online, so we could take it from our rooms. Overall, it was pretty chill. There was also a video interview component. You would be asked a question, given one minute to think about your answer, and then given three minutes to speak about it. I think my OA went really well—it was honestly one of the best OAs I’ve given. ### Shortlisting & Preparation This was for the **SD role**. It took around 10 days to get the results. Two people were selected, and I was one of them. Both of us had our interviews on different dates. Mine was on **27th August**, while hers was on **31st August**. I had around **2.5 days** to prepare. Unfortunately, I actually got a fever during that time, so I couldn’t study as much as I wanted to. Out of those 2.5 days, one day went into dealing with that, but during the other two days, I prepared for my **CS fundamentals, system design questions, personal projects, and a bit of DSA**. That was essentially my preparation. ### Interview Experience The interview was conducted online, and I gave it from my hostel room. At the start, there were two interviewers. They introduced themselves and then asked me to introduce myself, which I did. Afterwards, they mentioned that my resume mostly consisted of **AI/ML**, so they asked me how model training works and how a model actually learns. I explained backtracking and how we train models and stuff. Then there was a question about **compiler design**. Since I had a compiler-related project on my resume, they asked me some basics about it, such as how a compiler works. After that, they asked me a question about **what happens when you visit a website**—basically, what happens behind the scenes when you enter a URL and access a site. I explained the process from the browser side and what happens when the request is made. They also asked a **system design** question where I had to design a **chat application**. They asked what things I would take care of while designing it and what considerations I would keep in mind for the system. After that, we moved on to coding. They have their own **CoderPad platform**, where both the interviewer and candidate can write code. They asked me to share my screen, and then gave me two coding questions. Question 1 — Houses on a Street** There was a bunch of houses on a street, along with empty plots. Essentially, if an array is of size `n`, each slot can either contain a house or be an empty plot. I had to fill the empty plots with houses, with one condition: **two houses cannot be adjacent to each other**. In other words, you cannot have two consecutive houses. I think this was a fairly basic if-else question. I coded it up, and they asked me to try a few inputs, which I did. It worked. Question 2 — Next Greater Element** The second question was **Next Greater Element**. I used a **monotonic stack** to solve it, and I was able to do it. ### Overall Thoughts The entire interview was just **one hour**, and it seemed like a fixed-duration interview. Overall, I felt that they could have asked better questions or gone more in-depth, especially about my projects. I personally felt that the two coding questions they asked didn’t really do justice to my preparation or my skill set. But yeah, that’s what happened!