Harness

Role: Software Engineer

College: Not Specified (Previous Position - Software Engineer II at Sabre)

Interview Date: Not Specified (Experience published July 23, 2025, likely reflects an interview in late 2024 or early 2025 for a 2024 role)

Interview Type: Off-Campus

Result: Rejected

Difficulty: Medium

Rounds: 2 (HR Telephonic, Technical Round 1)

Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms, System Design (mentioned in HR conversation as a potential topic)

Experience:

The candidate, with 1.5 years of experience, was approached by HR on LinkedIn. After expressing interest, a telephonic conversation with HR took place. HR inquired about the candidate's current organization (CTC, tech stack, work experience) and then explained Harness's work and the interview process, which would include three technical rounds focusing on DSA and System Design.

Technical Round 1 (1 hour): This round started with introductions. The interviewer, a senior developer, immediately presented problem-solving questions.

• DSA Problem 1: Search in Row-wise and Column-wise Sorted Matrix (similar to GeeksforGeeks problem). The candidate discussed the approach, coded it in their IDE, explained the logic, and showed key and edge cases. The interviewer seemed satisfied with the optimized solution and its time/space complexity analysis.
• DSA Problem 2: Minimum Time Taken to Burn the Binary Tree from a Node (LeetCode Discuss problem). The candidate was not well-prepared for tree problems and politely requested an alternative. The interviewer kindly provided a different problem.
• DSA Problem 3: Paint House (LeetCode problem). The candidate discussed a recursive approach and then how it could be optimized using dynamic programming (DP). The interviewer was satisfied and asked the candidate to code it. The candidate struggled to implement the recursive function properly, taking 15-20 minutes. Due to time constraints, the interview concluded.

The candidate was unsure about selection due to not being able to code the second problem. Half an hour later, HR canceled the second technical interview.

Overall Experience: The interviewer was kind and provided hints. A tip shared was not to directly code the optimized solution, as it might lead the interviewer to increase the difficulty of subsequent questions.