Goldman Sachs | Associate SWE | Dallas, TX | Dec 2020 [Offer]

Phone Screen (1 hour)

My phone screen was conducted via Coderpad and lasted one hour. It included two coding questions and some behavioral questions.

• The first coding question was a simpler version of the High Five problem, where I had to process a list of [Student name, Grade] and return the highest average.
• I didn't get to finish the second coding question, as we needed to allocate time for behavioral questions and my own questions for the interviewer.
• For behavioral questions, I was asked: "How would you deal with a teammate who doesn't do much while working with you on a story, but takes all the credit?"

Virtual On-site (3 x 45-minute rounds)

The virtual on-site consisted of three 45-minute rounds.

System Design Round

This round focused on system design and distributed systems concepts.

• I was tasked with designing a system for students registering for classes.
• We also discussed Kafka, specifically "What is it?" and "How to handle a producer that is working too quickly for the consumer?"

SDLC Round

This round was more of a conversational style, aiming to understand my experience with software development processes.

• The interviewer asked about my experience with Agile methodologies.
• We discussed my previous SDLC experiences.
• I was asked what I had done to improve my team's processes.
• Another question involved my approach to debugging a bug found by QA. This round felt more like a dialogue to gauge my practical experience rather than seeking definitive right or wrong answers.

Coding Round

The final round was a coding assessment.

• I was given two coding questions.
• One of them involved an in-place array sort.
• The interviewers initially requested pseudocode but frequently asked for specific sections to be written in actual code.

After the interviews, I received an offer of 120k base + 20k bonus. Initially, they mentioned the offer could be either 85k+20k (Analyst) or 100k+20k (Associate). My Associate offer was a counter to another offer I had. I ultimately rejected the Goldman Sachs offer due to concerns about the poor Work-Life Balance, opting for a lower offer elsewhere that promised a better WLB.