Microsoft SDE Intern Interview Experience
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Microsoft - SDE2 - Coding Round
Goldman Sachs | Associate(SDE) - Entry Level | Bangalore | April 2020 [REJECT]
Summary
I was interviewed for an Associate (SDE) position at Goldman Sachs in Bangalore. After clearing an online assessment, I went through a Coder Pad round and two virtual interview rounds, tackling various LeetCode-style questions. Despite feeling confident in my performance, I was ultimately rejected.
Full Experience
A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, and after clearing the Online Assessment, my interview was scheduled within a week.
Coder Pad Round (1 hour)
This round felt easy as I had practiced similar questions before. For those unfamiliar, a Coder Pad round involves live coding on an online editor/compiler, where you can modify test cases, compile, and run your code. The pressure can be quite high, especially when your code doesn't work on the first attempt. I was asked two medium LeetCode questions, which I believe can be found in the company tag links online.After successfully clearing the first round, two back-to-back virtual interview rounds were scheduled a week later. They provided ample time to prepare for the subsequent rounds after each previous one.
Virtual Interview Round 1 (45 mins)
I faced two interviewers in this round. After a brief introduction about myself, they proceeded to ask the following questions:Virtual Interview Round 2 (45 mins)
Again, there were two interviewers. Following a thorough discussion about my projects, they began asking coding questions:- Given an unsorted array, arrange the elements in such a way that the elements at odd index should be less than the adjacent elements at even index.
- Given a sorted array and a number k, find out how many max elements we can create by distributing this value of k.
I felt my interviews went quite well. I answered all the questions with optimal complexity and logic. I was even approached for a fourth round, but unfortunately, it never happened as I was rejected before that, and they didn't provide a proper explanation for the decision.
Interview Questions (4)
Given head, the head of a linked list, determine if the linked list has a cycle in it.
There is a cycle in a linked list if there is some node in the list that can be reached again by continuously following the next pointers. Internally, pos is used to denote the index of the node that tail's next pointer is connected to. Note that pos is not passed as a parameter.
Return true if there is a cycle in the linked list. Otherwise, return false.
Given an unsorted array, arrange the elements in such a way that the elements at odd index should be less than the adjacent elements at even index.
Given a sorted array and a number k, find out how many max elements we can create by distributing this value of k.
Preparation Tips
I prepared by solving quality questions and focusing on finding optimal time complexity solutions, especially for problems commonly asked by Goldman Sachs. Having prior experience with similar problems helped me perform well in the coding rounds. My advice for others is to get all possible time complexities in mind while processing an approach, as that will significantly help.