Eternal

Role: SDE 1

College: Not Specified

Interview Date: April 2024

Interview Type: Full-Time

Result: Rejected

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 1 round

Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms (Search in sorted matrix 2), Work and personal projects.

Experience:

The candidate applied via a LinkedIn referral and received an interview call.

Round 1: DSA Round
The round began with introductions. The interviewer and candidate discussed their work for 5-10 minutes. Following this, a standard LeetCode problem, "Search in sorted matrix 2", was presented. The candidate initially provided two naive approaches (O(NM) and O(NlogM)) before giving the optimal O(N+M) solution. The interviewer asked the candidate to code the optimal solution, which was done quickly and passed the given test cases.

With 30 minutes remaining, the interviewer suggested an "even better" solution involving iterating through the last column from top to bottom and performing a binary search when an element was less than the target, claiming O(N+logM) complexity. The candidate expressed confusion about its correctness for edge cases, but the interviewer insisted it would work. After this, questions about the candidate's work and personal projects were asked, which were answered quickly. The candidate asked 3-4 questions, and the interview concluded.

Two days later, the candidate received a rejection email stating they were "not fit for the role at the moment." The candidate felt they deserved to proceed to the LLD round and attributed the rejection to the interviewer's potential misunderstanding of the optimal solution.