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Motive | SDE 2 | Worst Experience - Horrible treatment
Summary
I went through a comprehensive seven-round interview process for an SDE 2 position at Motive, including various technical rounds covering Data Structures, Algorithms, and Machine Coding, alongside HR and managerial discussions. Despite successfully navigating most rounds, I was ultimately rejected without specific feedback, which was quite disappointing.
Full Experience
Overview
I secured an interview at Motive for an SDE 2 role through a LinkedIn referral. The entire process consisted of seven elimination rounds, which certainly added to the pressure throughout the interviews.
Round 1: HR Screening
This round lasted about 20 minutes. We discussed my profile, my expectations regarding CTC, and the HR representative upfront stated that the company wouldn't be offering a substantial hike. Despite this, I decided to move forward with the process.
Round 2: Hiring Manager
This round involved an in-depth discussion about my resume, my past work experience, and the projects I had been involved in. We also covered aspects of culture fit and my genuine interest in the role. It felt like a comprehensive assessment of my fit and general knowledge.
Round 3: Data Structures
The first technical round was focused on Data Structures. I was given a LeetCode medium problem related to stacks and parenthesis, followed by a relevant follow-up question.
Round 4: Data Structures
Another Data Structures round, this one included two LeetCode medium problems. One involved finding the maximum length under a given condition, which typically points towards solutions using two-pointer or sliding window techniques. The second question was a variation of the classic Buy and Sell Stocks problem.
Round 5: Data Structures
This round presented two specific LeetCode problems, which I found to be very direct:
Merge Sorted Array: Merging two sorted arrays into the first array.
Search in Rotated Sorted Array: Finding an element in a sorted array that has been rotated.
Round 6: Machine Coding
Before this round, I received a detailed setup guide. The interview itself was extensive, focusing on reading data, applying queries, and implementing these queries as APIs. My task involved reading JSON data, creating appropriate data object models and classes, and then developing API endpoints. I successfully implemented the entire flow for one of the two required APIs, including setting it up with Postman. For the second API, due to time constraints, we discussed its design and where it would fit into the existing architecture.
Round 7: Top Grading Round
This was the final round, and after successfully clearing six rounds, I was quite confident about my chances. However, it felt like the interviewer was specifically looking for any potential red flags. We discussed my projects, my team dynamics, and I faced many behavioral questions, particularly 'tell me about a time when...' scenarios. Despite feeling that this round also went well, I was ultimately rejected. I did not expect this outcome, especially after making it so far.
This was probably one of my worst interview experiences. I repeatedly reached out to both HRs for proper feedback, but they never provided any, simply sending a generic rejection email.
Interview Questions (2)
You are given two integer arrays nums1 and nums2, sorted in non-decreasing order, and two integers m and n, representing the number of elements in nums1 and nums2 respectively. Merge nums2 into nums1 such that nums1 becomes a single sorted array. The final sorted array should not be returned by the function, but instead be stored inside the array nums1. To accommodate this, nums1 has a length of m + n, where the first m elements denote the elements that should be merged, and the last n elements are set to 0 and should be ignored. nums2 has a length of n.
There is an integer array nums sorted in ascending order (with distinct values). Prior to being passed to your function, nums is possibly rotated at an unknown pivot index k (0 <= k < nums.length) such that the resulting array is [nums[k], nums[k+1], ..., nums[n-1], nums[0], nums[1], ..., nums[k-1]] (0-indexed). For example, [0,1,2,4,5,6,7] might be rotated at pivot index 3 and become [4,5,6,7,0,1,2]. Given the array nums after the possible rotation and an integer target, return the index of target if it is in nums, or -1 if it is not in nums. You must write an algorithm with O(log n) runtime complexity.