eBay | BLR | MTS1 | Reject
Summary
I completed a coding round, a system‑design round, and a hiring‑manager round for an MTS1 position at eBay in Bangalore, but was rejected after the HM interview.
Full Experience
Hi Folks,
Currently, SSE @ Walmart.
YOE: 6.8
Sent cold e‑mail to a bunch of recruiters since applying through workday wasnt working.
Received CodeSignal OA link (Industry Coding Assignment).
Cleared. Score: 500/600.
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Recruiter reached out and scheduled the 1st round of interview virtually. This was supposed to be a DSA/Coding round.
R1 (31st March): (Taken by MTS2 from Shipping Team)
Q1: (A huge paragraph was given, summarizing here for brevity)
You are given a transaction log that is append only. At any point of time there could a fradulent transaction happening and you only know the position. You are supposed to remove that transaction from the log. You are not given the starting point and you cant traverse the log more than once.
My take : This summarized to deletion of nth node from end of LL.
Explained the approach and coded the solution.
Q2:
You're given a HTML/XML file with lot of markup tags. There could be nested tags as well. You're supposed to write a write a parsing function that would read the file and construct a n-ary tree.
Extension:
You will also add functionalities like:
addNode, deleteNode and updateData accordingly.
Interviewer told he doesnt need working code for this and only asked for approach.
After 3-4 days, recruiter reached out and informed that I'm shortlisted for in‑person drive at eBay office.
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R2: (10th April): (HLD: Taken by a random EM)
Intro (5 min)
Since I was from Ads background, he gave me the following design requirements:
You are getting millions of ads click events and you need to design a persistent storage for it. Design the system as a SaaS product.
My take: To me the term "persistent storage" wasnt clear, so I clarified since he was putting a lot of emphasis on that term.
He said we just need to store the events and only provide queryByAdIdandUserId() functionality.
I was about to write the FR and NFRs, he rushed me directly to design the entity. When I wrote 1 entity, he said the focus of this round is not on the entities but how do I store it.
So, I drew that the events would be ingested by a Kafka consumer and would be dumped in Cassandra, since its write throughput is very high.
He interjected and said I cant use any available DB and the requirement is to design the storage. I tried to explain the Cassandra internals (its write and read path) but he said he doesnt care how Cassandra works, I need to come up with my own "Cassandra as a service".
The round lasted for about 1 hr.
I asked the recruiter about the feedback and I was told that I would be having the HM round next. Although I wasnt sure if these were elimination rounds or not.
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R3: (10th April): (HM: Taken by a random senior EM)
Intro (5 min)
Questions needed to be answered in STAR format.
1. Why do you want to leave Walmart?
2. Why do you want to join eBay?
3. Tell me a time when you helped a peer ? Why you helped? How you helped?
4. Tell me a time you brought an impact to your team?
5. Tell me a time when you innovated something?
6. Tell me a time when you simplified something for a customer?
7. Tell me a time when you received critical feedback from your manager?
8. Tell me what makes you feel happy about work?
9. Tell me what is off‑putting for you at work?
10. Tell me why should I hire you ?
11. Tell me why should I not hire you?
At the end, I gently asked which team I am interviewing for, and he replied eBay does pool hiring and I can be placed in any team randomly if selected.
Update (28/04): Recruiter called to inform that my candidature was rejected in HM round.
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My opinion: It defeats the purpose of hiring, since a candidate goes through multiple JDs and applies to the roles he/she thinks suits best, but then these recruiters (vendors) randomly places someone to any team, sounds completely illogical to me.
Personally speaking, eBay TA team is sh*t .
Only Pros of interviewing at eBay : Get a free T‑shirt.
Read my 6 months prior experience here: https://leetcode.com/discuss/post/7189857/ebay-sse-in-person-interview-in-progress-idte/
#ebay #mts1 #java #backend #bangalore
Interview Questions (3)
Delete nth node from end of a transaction log (linked list)
You are given a transaction log that is append‑only. At any point there could be a fraudulent transaction happening and you only know its position. You need to remove that transaction from the log. You are not given the starting point and you cannot traverse the log more than once.
Parse HTML/XML file into an n‑ary tree
You're given an HTML/XML file with many markup tags, possibly nested. Write a parsing function that reads the file and constructs an n‑ary tree representing the markup hierarchy. Additionally, design functions to addNode, deleteNode, and updateData in the tree.
Design persistent storage for millions of ad click events
Design a SaaS product that can ingest millions of ad click events and provide persistent storage. The system should support a queryByAdIdAndUserId() functionality. You cannot use any existing database; you must design the storage mechanism yourself.