Summary
I successfully interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer (SDE-2) position at M2P in Bengaluru, India, and received an offer after two challenging onsite technical rounds covering data structures, algorithms, machine coding, and system design.
Full Experience
Round 1 (Technical) (2 hrs) - Onsite Interview
My first round was a 2-hour onsite technical interview. I was asked to implement a function to generate a random unique 16-character ID using alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9). Following that, I tackled a machine coding problem for the classic Snake and Ladders game. The round concluded with a LeetCode problem on pattern matching, specifically 'Regular Expression Matching'.
Round 2 (Technical) (1.5 hrs) - Onsite Interview
The second technical round lasted 1.5 hours and was also onsite. It began with an in-depth discussion about the projects listed on my resume. I then went through a system design discussion for one of my major projects, followed by various clarifying questions. Another key part of this round was designing a document management service catering to different co-lenders and document types, emphasizing High-Level Design (HLD), microservices architecture, database design, and relevant design patterns. Finally, I faced technical questions covering SQL, unit testing, scaling strategies, S3, and SFTP, mainly linked to technologies mentioned in my resume.
Verdict: Selected
Interview Questions (4)
Implement a function to generate a random unique 16-character ID. The ID should consist of characters from A-Z, a-z, and 0-9.
Design and implement the classic game of Snake and Ladders. This typically involves defining game rules, player movement, board state, and handling snakes and ladders.
Design a robust document management service. The service needs to handle documents from various co-lenders and support different document types, possibly with configuration-based logic. Key aspects to cover include High-Level Design (HLD), microservices architecture, database schema design, and applicable design patterns.
Summary
I had a virtual interview with M2P for a Senior SDE role in June 2024. It was an extremely frustrating experience due to an inflexible interviewer who was unwilling to consider any solution other than their own preferred one.
Full Experience
I was interviewed with M2P virtually for a Senior SDE position. This was one of the worst interview experiences I've had to date. The interviewer seemed quite inexperienced, as they were fixated on one specific solution for the problem and absolutely refused to accept any other approach, even if my proposed solution was better in terms of understanding, explanation, and complexity. Honestly, I would advise against wasting your time interviewing here.
Interview Questions (1)
Given the root node of a tree and two other specific nodes within the tree, find the distance (number of edges) between these two nodes.