Samsung R&d

# Samsung R&D Research Intern – IIT Patna (On-Campus) ECE student. Two rounds: Technical, then HR. The DSA was very basic, but the core CS questions were medium to hard. ## Round 1 – Technical Introduce yourself. Projects: why you built it, tech stack, and questions on each bullet point in the resume. OS: Mutex and locks What is a deadlock, how does it occur, and a few ways to prevent it Scheduling algorithms (SJF, FCFS, etc.) Difference between a thread and a process DSA: **Second maximum in an array.** Keep `firstMax` and `secondMax` and update both in a single pass. **Reverse a linked list.** Standard pointer manipulation. **Detect a cycle in a linked list.** Slow and fast pointers. **Merge overlapping intervals.** Given a list of `[start, end]` intervals, merge every overlapping pair and return the result. Sort by start. If the current start comes after the last merged end, push it as a new interval. Otherwise set the last end to max(lastEnd, currEnd). Puzzle: Two trains are 400 m apart on the same track, heading toward each other at 60 km/h and 80 km/h. A bee starts at the midpoint and flies at 100 km/h toward the first train. When it reaches the train it turns around instantly, and it keeps bouncing between the trains until they meet. How long does the bee fly? The bee flies for exactly as long as the trains take to meet. The closing speed is 140 km/h and the gap is 0.4 km, so 0.4 / 140 h ≈ 10.3 seconds. The bee's own speed doesn't matter. ## Round 2 – HR Introduce yourself, family members, where you live JEE rank and the category it was secured in; questions about the drop year Why IIT Patna, why your current branch Why Samsung? Samsung usually doesn't offer PPOs to interns, so why still join? Tell me something about yourself that isn't in your resume (hobbies, interests) Projects again: why you built it, group or solo, project overview Future goals High school and favourite subject. The answer was mathematics, which led to puzzles: **Cut a cake into 8 pieces with 3 cuts.** Make 2 cuts, rearrange and align the pieces, then make the third cut. **A monkey climbs 3 m each day and slides 2 m each night. On which day does it reach 30 m?** Day 28. After 27 days it's at 27 m, and on day 28 it climbs to 30 m before it can slide back. Any questions for me?