I recently had an interview experience at Detect Technologies for an SDE-2 position. The entire process consisted of three rounds.

Round 1: DSA + Project Discussion

The first round focused on data structures and algorithms. The interviewer asked me to solve the Merge Intervals problem. I explained my approach and implemented an efficient solution. Following that, I was given another problem: to write code to flatten a list. After the coding part, the interviewer asked basic questions about the projects listed on my resume. I walked them through the key highlights of my recent work, discussing the technologies I used and the challenges I faced.

Round 2: Flutter Deep Dive + Work Experience

This round was more focused on my work experience and an in-depth exploration of my Flutter knowledge. The questions revolved around several specific topics:

• What is lazy loading, and how have you used it in your projects?
• How do you use the null-check operator in Flutter?
• Can you explain the widget lifecycle in Flutter?
• How does the widget tree work, and how do you optimize it?
• What is the Flutter inspector, and how do you use it?
• What state management techniques do you use, and why did you choose BLoC?
• Can you explain tree shaking and how it benefits a Flutter app?

The interviewer also touched on various best practices for Flutter development and cross-examined my understanding with multiple follow-up questions.

Round 3: High-Level Design (HLD)

In the final round, I was asked to design the High-Level Architecture of Google Photos. Key points of discussion included:

• How I would design the high-level architecture of Google Photos.
• How I would handle the upload mechanism for photos.
• What I would do if there was a network issue during the upload, and how I would ensure the upload resumes rather than starting over.
• How I would track the upload status (e.g., uploaded, in-progress, failed).
• How I would keep all devices updated when a photo is uploaded on one device.
• How I would ensure cross-device consistency for photo updates.

There were several follow-up questions around scalability, fault tolerance, and ensuring a smooth user experience, all of which I handled by breaking down the system into smaller components and explaining them in detail.

Conclusion:

I successfully received an SDE-2 offer, which I gladly accepted. However, I later received an offer from Myntra, and after working at Detect for two weeks, I made the difficult decision to resign. Unfortunately, I faced some consequences for that decision.