Summary
I recently interviewed for an SDE-1 Backend role at Allen Digital, where I completed a machine coding challenge to design a Vaccination Booking System. I successfully implemented the core requirements within 100 minutes and was subsequently selected for the next round.
Full Experience
I had my first interview for an SDE-1 Backend position at Allen Digital, which was conducted by Barraiser, a third-party company. With around 10 months of experience, I was given 100 minutes within a 120-minute slot to design and code a complete Vaccination Booking System. The interview started and ended with 10 minutes for discussion. The interviewer presented specific requirements, for which I had to create APIs/functions. I successfully coded a working system incorporating all the mentioned requirements within the time limit. There was a bonus requirement, but due to time constraints, I couldn't implement it and was asked to upload the code and move to the discussion phase. The discussion primarily revolved around my approach and solution to the problem. I received a call from HR the next day informing me of my selection for the next round, which will be a DSA round.
Interview Questions (1)
I was tasked with designing an entire Vaccination Booking System within 100 minutes. The interview included an initial and final 10-minute discussion period, leaving me with 100 minutes to both conceptualize and code the system. The interviewer provided a specific set of requirements, for which I needed to create APIs/functions. The main requirements were:
- Add users and vaccination centers.
- Allow each vaccination center to have varying daily capacities, be located in different districts and states, and support modification/addition of daily capacity.
- Enable retrieval of a vaccination center's capacity for any given day.
- Provide a list of all vaccination centers within a specific district.
- Allow users to book a vaccination slot, returning a booking ID and decreasing the center's capacity. This also involved checking if the user is above 18 years of age and if the center has the required capacity.
- Allow users to cancel their booking using the booking ID, which should also free up the center's capacity.
Preparation Tips
My key takeaway from this experience is to allocate just a short amount of time, probably no more than 15-20 minutes, for discussing the problem and then focus heavily on writing the code. In such machine coding interviews, interviewers generally expect candidates to deliver a complete, working solution rather than just engaging in extensive discussions about the approach.
Summary
I recently interviewed with Allen Digital for a Frontend Developer role, completing two machine coding rounds and a culture-fit interview. I successfully solved two DSA problems, 3 Sum and Merge Intervals, during the first machine coding round despite some in-interview confusion regarding the latter's solution.
Full Experience
I recently had my interview experience with Allen Digital for a Frontend Developer position. The process consisted of three rounds: two machine coding rounds and a final culture-fit/managerial round.
The initial machine coding round focused on Data Structures and Algorithms. I was presented with two specific problems: 3 Sum and Merge Intervals. I implemented the 3 Sum problem using the two-pointers method. Although I hadn't encountered the Merge Intervals problem before, I managed to solve it during the interview.
I faced a slight challenge with the Merge Intervals problem when I tried to trace my solution, especially the 'else' part, on the same document I was coding on, but the interviewer prevented me from doing so. This initially confused me, but the interviewer continued to test my code with various edge cases. Fortunately, my solution proved robust and worked correctly for all test cases. I decided to share this experience since there weren't any existing posts about Allen Digital's interview process.