Blinkit SDE-2 | Reject
Summary
Applied for SDE-2 role at Blinkit and faced a challenging interview process. The interview included a discussion about my current project, followed by two technical questions. The first question involved finding the minimum distance in a weighted directed graph with a special edge addition constraint. The second question was about caching and its limitations. Despite solving the first question with a hint, the second question was not answered, leading to a rejection.
Full Experience
My interview with Blinkit for the SDE-2 role started with a brief introduction followed by a discussion about my current project. The interviewer then asked a technical question about finding the minimum possible distance from a source to a destination in a weighted directed graph, with the condition that we can add at most one edge to the graph. The expected time and space complexity was E * log V. I was able to solve this question with the help of a hint from the interviewer. Since we were out of time, he asked me not to code the solution.
After that, the interviewer asked about the advantages of cache. I explained that cache is used for faster retrieval, but then he followed up with another question: "Assume we have infinite cost. Why can't we just replace a database with a cache?" I was not able to answer this question. The interview ended with a rejection, and I'm wondering if not being able to answer the last question was the reason for the rejection.
Interview Questions (2)
You are given a weighted directed graph, a source, and a destination. You also have a set of edges, out of which you can add at most one edge to the graph. Find the minimum possible distance from the source to the destination.
Assume we have infinite cost. Why can't we just replace a database with a cache?