Motive Interviews

My interview process at Motive for a Staff Engineer role comprised five rounds.

The first round was with a Hiring Manager, focusing on High-Level Design for a movie ticket booking system. We discussed components like the availability and pricing engines. I felt I performed well, though the interviewer's intense questioning made it feel like a FAANG interview.

The second round involved two LeetCode medium problems: one to find a triplet whose sum equals a target (with a constant space constraint, though I don't recall the exact problem), and the other was Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock. I managed to solve both optimally and coded them effectively.

The third round also featured two LeetCode medium coding questions: Valid Parenthesis String and Group Anagrams. Again, I provided optimal solutions and coded them well.

The fourth round was another High-Level Design discussion, this time on load handling, logistics, scheduling pickups, and capacity estimation, drawing parallels to Uber's design challenges. I felt I did well, and the interviewer seemed satisfied, despite some initial ambiguities in their questions.

The fifth round was a real-world coding challenge, described as an LLD problem where I was allowed to use the internet (but not AI). This was the most challenging round; the interviewer spent 30 minutes on my past project tech questions before presenting three APIs to implement within an hour. I successfully coded one of the APIs, but overall, I felt this interviewer was unprofessional and potentially jealous.

After the interviews, the process took 1.5 months. I followed up with the recruiter multiple times but received no concrete feedback, eventually getting a rejection email without explanation. I found the entire process frustrating, identifying several red flags, particularly the LLD round. I wouldn't recommend others waste their time with this company, especially those on a notice period, as they don't expedite the process.

Interviewed at Motive for SDE 2 role. The process started with a hiring manager round, which focused on my background and technical depth. Then, I moved to the technical/DSA round where I solved two LeetCode problems. The third round was another technical/DSA round with two more problems. The fourth round was a machine coding task where I designed an API for deprecated cars. Finally, the fifth round was a High Level Design (HLD) round where I designed TikTok, which was the bottleneck leading to rejection.

Round 1: Data Structures & Algorithms

In this round, I was presented with the problem of finding an element within a rotated sorted array. Fortunately, I had encountered this specific problem before on LeetCode, which allowed me to solve it successfully.

Round 2: High-Level Design (HLD)

The HLD round began with a request to discuss a project I was particularly proud of. This led to a natural conversation, including basic questions about my choices regarding databases for that project.

Following this, I was given a task to design the table schema for a system similar to BookMyShow. I proceeded to create a comprehensive and normalized schema, detailing entities such as artists, movies, theatres, halls, shows, users, bookings, and cities, meticulously defining primary and foreign keys for each. I believe I presented a very thorough design.

Despite what I felt was a strong performance in both rounds, it was disheartening to receive a rejection email.

I am currently working at a product based company with around 2.5 years of experience.

At Motive, the interview process begins with a conversation with the Hiring Manager, which is different from many other companies. If the Hiring Manager is satisfied, the candidate then proceeds to the coding rounds.

Round 1 : Hiring Manager (1 hr) The interview began with a discussion about my professional background and the nature of the work I’ve been involved in. The Hiring Manager was interested in understanding my experience, the projects I've worked on, and the technologies I've used.

After getting a sense of my profile, he provided an overview of Motive,the products they build, and the kind of technical challenges they tackle.

Following this, he asked me to design a High-Level Design (HLD) for a Search Autocomplete feature.

Received a rejection mail after 3 days. Was not provided any feedback.

Hi Guys, I have been offered a backend development role at Motive.

I was surprised seeing there is no OA.
There were 6 rounds in total. 3 DSA rounds, 1 Hiring Manager round, 1 Machine coding round, 1 Techno-Managerial round.
Each one is an Elimination round.
All DSA rounds are held on codesignal platform.

1st DSA Round:
Problem 1 : Given a shoe rack which may have left and right shoe of different sizes. You need to tell whether you can pair all right and left shoes together of same sizes. Return true or false.

Problem 2 : Given a string of opening and closing parenthesis along with * as special character. you can replace * with either opening or closing parenthesis. Need to tell whether the string is valid or not. Conditions for validity -> for each opening there should be corresponding closing parenthesis.

Expected working solution for both

2nd DSA Round:
Only one DSA questions was asked but went into several edge cases for this problem.

Problem: Given a string which contains numbers as well as operators. You need to find the final solution for this string after solvinf it mathematically. Edge cases : divide by zero, negative numbers, etc

Expected working solution

3rd DSA Round:
Only one DSA question was asked since I took more time to solve it.

Problem: Given a string of numbers you need to return a list of valid IPV4 addresses that can be formed using this string. You just need tio insert dots in between. I explained the approach of recursion + backtraching. The recursive part was good but somehow facing little issue in backtracking.
could not reach the final answer. Could feel little communication gap with the interviewer.

4th Hiring Manager Round:
Asked project related questions, how did I implement them?, why I did some of the decisions during implementation?
Asked work ex related questions, what is my contributions in team? how did I implement some of the features?
More focus was on HLD aspects including DB choices, system scalability, system performance, why this not that kind of questions.

5th Machine Coding Round:
Given yearly distributed API endpoints holding cars sold on that particular year, expose a new API endpoint which will take an year as query parameter and return the list of cars which were sold for last 10 years from the input year but not sold in recent 2 years.
Took some time to understand the actual expectation.
Free to use internet but not AI tools. Free to use any backend tech or framework.
Expected to get the result when the endpoint is hit through postman.

6th Techno Managerial Round:
Asked managerial questions like conflicts with teammates, weaknesses, what are you doing to overcome them?, task not completed within deadline how you communicated? What are your strengths according to your manager? why do you think he thinks this way?, what are your strengths according to you?, Any past setbacks, How did I overcome? and many questions related to team and work environment and work behaviour.


Received final verdict after 3 days.
Verdict : SELECTED
HR is very responsive, replied to every mail and picked every call.

Compensation Details : Motive Compensation

Accepted the offer

Hope it helps.
Thank you!

Intern position location --> Remote
Comp -->50-60k INR

# 1 Coding
4 question leetcode easy to medium in 75 mins (Not sure if it was 75 or 90).

# 2 DSA round
Least common ancestors , about projects at current company .
Interviewer was nice , but not from the same team so not much help with understanding role details.

# 3 HR interview
Interviewer -> A guy in 60s , started without asking intro and with typical hr questions like why switch when you have intern.

All was well until i asked him role description , he described the role which was working with embedded systems and coding primarly in c.

I furthure asked question about possiblity of working with AI but he rejected any possiblity .

Finaly i ended up saving time for both of us and conveying that my electronics is as good as of a duck. So neither the job was one which i was looking for nor i was a good candidate for the role.
I work with high level languages and is more intrested in working with software development .

Let me know if you need any details.
Thanks

Overview

I secured an interview at Motive for an SDE 2 role through a LinkedIn referral. The entire process consisted of seven elimination rounds, which certainly added to the pressure throughout the interviews.

Round 1: HR Screening

This round lasted about 20 minutes. We discussed my profile, my expectations regarding CTC, and the HR representative upfront stated that the company wouldn't be offering a substantial hike. Despite this, I decided to move forward with the process.

Round 2: Hiring Manager

This round involved an in-depth discussion about my resume, my past work experience, and the projects I had been involved in. We also covered aspects of culture fit and my genuine interest in the role. It felt like a comprehensive assessment of my fit and general knowledge.

Round 3: Data Structures

The first technical round was focused on Data Structures. I was given a LeetCode medium problem related to stacks and parenthesis, followed by a relevant follow-up question.

Round 4: Data Structures

Another Data Structures round, this one included two LeetCode medium problems. One involved finding the maximum length under a given condition, which typically points towards solutions using two-pointer or sliding window techniques. The second question was a variation of the classic Buy and Sell Stocks problem.

Round 5: Data Structures

This round presented two specific LeetCode problems, which I found to be very direct:

• Merge Sorted Array: Merging two sorted arrays into the first array.

• Search in Rotated Sorted Array: Finding an element in a sorted array that has been rotated.

Round 6: Machine Coding

Before this round, I received a detailed setup guide. The interview itself was extensive, focusing on reading data, applying queries, and implementing these queries as APIs. My task involved reading JSON data, creating appropriate data object models and classes, and then developing API endpoints. I successfully implemented the entire flow for one of the two required APIs, including setting it up with Postman. For the second API, due to time constraints, we discussed its design and where it would fit into the existing architecture.

Round 7: Top Grading Round

This was the final round, and after successfully clearing six rounds, I was quite confident about my chances. However, it felt like the interviewer was specifically looking for any potential red flags. We discussed my projects, my team dynamics, and I faced many behavioral questions, particularly 'tell me about a time when...' scenarios. Despite feeling that this round also went well, I was ultimately rejected. I did not expect this outcome, especially after making it so far.

This was probably one of my worst interview experiences. I repeatedly reached out to both HRs for proper feedback, but they never provided any, simply sending a generic rejection email.

My Interview Journey at Motive (KeepTruckin)

My interview process for the Software Engineer role at Motive (KeepTruckin) began in June 2023. I went through a comprehensive series of seven rounds, each focusing on different aspects of my technical and professional capabilities.

Round 1 - Phone Screen (45 minutes)

This initial phone screen was dedicated to a deep dive into one of my past projects. I discussed its architecture, challenges I faced, and the solutions I implemented, along with my specific contributions.

Round 2 - Phone Screen (1 hour)

The second phone screen was a coding challenge where I was asked to solve a problem related to implementing a basic calculator.

Round 3 - System Design (1 hour)

This round focused on system design. I was tasked with designing an event booking system. I outlined the necessary APIs, user interaction flows, database design considerations, and explained my approach to handling concurrent seat bookings.

Round 4 - Integration Round (1 hour)

This was an interesting practical round involving API integration. I had to use the Nominatim API to find the postal address for a given latitude-longitude pair, then extend this to process a list of pairs from a CSV file. Finally, I used the OSRM API to calculate a route between two points.

Round 5 - Topgrading (1 hour)

The fifth round was a behavioral interview, following the topgrading methodology. I answered questions about my work experience, responsibilities in previous roles, how I rate my own performance, and my reasons for leaving past teams.

Round 6 - Coding (1 hour)

This coding round presented two problems: one on validating palindromes and another on determining if a string could be a permutation of a palindrome.

Round 7 - Coding (1 hour)

The final coding round involved two more string manipulation problems: checking for valid anagrams and finding all occurrences of anagrams of a pattern string within a larger text.

After completing all seven rounds, I unfortunately received a rejection.