Flexport | SDE-1 | Online Assessment & Interview Experience | Feb 2025

I applied for the SDE-1 position at Flexport through LinkedIn Easy Apply. After a few weeks, I received an Online Assessment invite, which consisted of four Data Structures and Algorithms problems: two LeetCode Easy and two LeetCode Medium. I completed the OA successfully.

First Interview – DSA Round (Early February)

About two months after the OA, I received an invitation for the first interview. On the interview day, the interviewer initially forgot to join the call. I emailed HR, and after about 30 minutes, he responded and convinced me to take the interview immediately instead of rescheduling.

The DSA Problem

After a brief introduction, he presented me with a problem: "You are given an n × m chessboard with a knight at (0,0). You need to determine if the knight can move to all cells on the board. The knight can revisit cells multiple times."

I initially proposed a greedy approach, stating that if n >= 4 and m >= 4, it's always possible. He asked me to consider another approach to discuss further. I then suggested using recursion and backtracking.

Coding & Execution

I was asked to write the code in any IDE and then copy it to a Google Doc. I implemented the recursion + backtracking solution. He provided test cases, ran my code, and it worked as expected.

Follow-up: No Revisited Cells Allowed

The interviewer then modified the problem: "Now, the knight cannot revisit any cell." I adapted my existing recursion + backtracking code to meet this new constraint. The interviewer initially thought my solution was incorrect, but after I performed a dry run, he realized it was correct. He ran test cases again, and the code worked fine.

Approximately one hour later, HR sent an invite for a Machine Coding Round.

Second Interview – Machine Coding Round

Poor Communication from the Interviewer

This was honestly one of the worst interview experiences I've had. The interviewer and I started with brief introductions, and he asked about a recent project I worked on at my company. After I explained a few things, he formed an incorrect perception of my project. This led to a significant miscommunication where he was asking something, and I was understanding something else, resulting in about 10-15 minutes of wasted time and confusion.

Machine Coding Task – Low-Level Design (LLD) of Chess

The interviewer did not clarify upfront what he expected from this round, which further added to the confusion. I started by discussing requirements, object design, and system flow. After about 10 minutes, he interrupted, saying, "Just write the classes." I began writing class structures. About 15 minutes later, he suddenly stated, "I only wanted the Chess Piece class."

Throughout the interview, the interviewer was barely responding and kept muting himself, making me feel like I was talking to myself. When I asked, "Does this approach look good?", he only replied: "Keep going, I'm looking."

After a while, he abruptly ended the interview, saying, "Your interview is over. Ask me a few questions if you have."

Due to the extremely poor experience in the second round, I was ultimately rejected.