
Anonymous
Upvoted by , SDE at Amazon (2017-present) and , SDE at Amazon · Updated 9y ·
I recently had been through Flipkart interview process at Hyderabad. Here is my overall experience:
- Got an email invite for interview from Flipkart. It was having a link of google maps for the venue. The venue was supposed to be Regus, Midtown whereas they pinned it somewhere god knows. I reached at the location given in maps, and found to be wrong. Called HR and came to know that the actual venue is 5 km away from that point. All the candidates faced the same problem but they did not send any edit to first email about correction in location.
- Reached the location and was seated in a room. After 30 minutes i was sent for the first round which was algorithm and data structures round.
The interviewer introduced himself as SDE-3 in Flipkart.
- Q1: Given an array which consists of only 0, 1 and 2 while there are repetitions for all of them. He asked me to sort the array.
I asked if he is expecting any complexity? He said O(n). After 5 minutes i was ready with the solution which was working in O(n).
He said: there is a better solution than this. I said: please explain.
Unfortunately he was a solution memorizing person and he was not able to remind the algorithm which he had memorized for interview. He was scratching his head, writing down something and looking into his laptop for help while i was looking straight to him and he was not comfortable in copying from his laptop. 2 minutes he struggled hard but could not remind. I gave him full chance to cheat from his lappy and finally he came with something which was not found to be working completely. LOL - Q2: Asked to write a function to add binary numbers represented in string.
Solved it straight away. No discussions on this - Q3: There is a biased function which gives only 0 for a coin flip. Write a function using existing biased fucntion which gives and unbiased result.
I argued that if a function is 100% biased, you will end up writing a complete new function to give you results.
Later he realized that he explained it wrong
- After round 1, was given a break of 10 minutes. 2nd round they called it machine coding round in which they asked me to design a Battleship game( Battleship (puzzle) ) in 90 minutes.
I came up with a working game in 60 minutes. My design was in a way that, the player owns set of ships and a board and ships are placed on the board. I thought they will run the game and will do rigorous testing. Hence i tried to cover all the edge cases and made it most flexible to adapt new modifications.
I was surprised they did not see the code. Neither if the game is working and directly jump into the argument that the design should be in a way that board owns the ships. I said it may be perception of design. While we are solving a problem, it can be solved in many different ways. Instead of comparing the design with the one he was saying, he just kept saying that your design is wrong.
Later he asked me to introduce new kind of ships, new kind of hits...
which my design was able to adapt in hardly one line of code change. - After all this, I realized that they are sent with a known solution and they do not welcome new soltions or designs for sure.
Whole recruitment team was behaving like first year kids in college.
My over all interview experience was pathetic. - They asked me to leave for the day after all this.
I am a software developer at amazon. My interview was consisting of 4 rounds. Details are as following.
- Round 1: Asked me to find 2 largest elements in an array in O(n).
Did it with slightly long code but in O(n). Interviewer gave a hint to short the code and did that accordingly as well.
Then he asked an sql question on joins. Did it somehow.
Then he asked if 2 employees are travelling and they have an start date and an end date, how many overlaps are possible: found 8. - Round 2: Asked to find an element in a sorted array where a[i] == i. Complexity expected was O(logn). Did it with modified binary search.
Then he asked me to find shortest path in a 2d array with some constrainst given. Could not do it.
Then he asked me to write the code for merge sort. Did it. - Round 3: Asked to find the peak element in an array where it is strictly increasing and then strictly decreasing. Did it with modified binary search.
Then he asked me to find all the heavy paths in a binary tree where heavy means sum of all the nodes from root to leaf should be greater than a threshold. Did it with recursion.
Then some project related questions. - Round 4: All were personal and project related questions.
I was selected after all this. I found interviewer to be more sensible at amazon than flipkart. All of them were welcoming new ideas and solution to the question asked. Round 3 and 4 intervieweres seemed highly experienced and sensible. No one was peeking in their laptops during interview and it went like happy discussions in all the rounds.
Hope, I answer your question
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