Adobe CS-1 | Interview experience | Selected
Summary
I interviewed for Adobe (CS-1) and was selected after a comprehensive 5-round process that included Data Structures & Algorithms, Low-Level Design, High-Level Design, managerial discussions, and a director round. The entire process spanned three weeks.
Full Experience
Round 1(DSA):
This round was primarily focused on DSA. Started with intro and questions on projects from resume. Interviewer asked 1 medium Leetcode problem with working code on Hackerrank. Coded with optimal approach & edge cases. Then asked minimum cost to cut sticks problem, for which I explained and told that this is standard DP problem. So he changed question to create binary tree using preorder and inorder traversal. Explained approach but didn't ask for code. Then was asked 1 more leetcode medium question. Explained approach but wasn't able to write complete working code due to time constraints but interviewer was satisfied. In end, he asked on how to handle multi-concurrency in java.
Round 2(Design):
LLD round on how to design Train ticket booking(IRCTC). Several use cases like book trains between stations, find trains, how to assign seats, routes, letting users book tickets if user dropped in between and seat is vacant post certain station etc. Majorly started from DB schema and how overall usecses would work via sql queries.
Round 3(Design):
LLD round on how to create Checkout system after adding items to cart. Should handle authentication and authorization for all API calls. Started with entities and was asked for Producton ready code. Wrote modular services with abstraction, interfaces. Used patterns, asked for more patterns so that this could be improved. Explained on that part. Interviewer was satisfied. Didn't ask to run the code.
Round 4(Managerial Round): The interview started with the introduction. We had discussions around my project and several questions on it. Then it was HLD and LLD round on how to schedule meetings on google calender. Input: N users having vacant meeting slots. Schedule a meeting so that all/max users are available. It was more of how to approach the problem. Started with usecases, Schema design, SQL queries to power usecases and mix of Merge intervals algorithm.
Round 5(Director round): Started with intro. Discussed how previous interviews went, discussed questions on projects. Behavioural questions like why Adobe, challenging thinks I worked upon etc. Went pretty well.
Overall it was a good interview experience. The overall process took 3 weeks. Accepted the offer.
Overall Verdict: Selected
Feel free to add comments if you want to ask something. Will add compensation details soon.
Interview Questions (7)
The interviewer asked the 'minimum cost to cut sticks' problem.
Create a binary tree using preorder and inorder traversal.
How to handle multi-concurrency in Java.
Design a Train ticket booking system (IRCTC). Use cases included booking trains between stations, finding trains, assigning seats, managing routes, and handling scenarios where users drop off and seats become vacant post certain stations. The discussion mainly focused on DB schema and how overall use cases would work via SQL queries.
Design a Checkout system after adding items to the cart. It should handle authentication and authorization for all API calls. The design started with entities, and I was asked for production-ready code, writing modular services with abstraction and interfaces. Patterns were also discussed for improvement.
Design a meeting scheduler similar to Google Calendar. Input: N users having vacant meeting slots. The goal was to schedule a meeting so that all or the maximum number of users are available. The approach covered use cases, schema design, SQL queries to power use cases, and incorporated a mix of the Merge Intervals algorithm.
Behavioral questions included 'Why Adobe?' and 'Challenging things I worked upon'.