Quince Interview Experience – SDE 2 ( Selected )

✅ Result: Cleared all rounds

📅 Round 1: DSA + Conceptual

Discussion:

• Brief introduction
• Questions related to previous projects

✅ Coding Question 1:

🍌 Koko Eating Bananas Link: https://leetcode.com/problems/koko-eating-bananas/description/

• Solved using Binary Search

✅ Coding Question 2:

🏆 Kth Largest Element in an Array
Link: kth-largest-element-in-an-array - gfg question

• Initially proposed O(n log n) solution using sorting
• Then improved to O(n log k) using Priority Queue
• Finally proposed Quick Select (approx. O(n)) approach

🧠 Conceptual Question 3:

Problem:
There is an n x m infinitely large grid containing water.

• At any time, we can convert a water cell into land
• At any time, we may be asked: how many islands are there?
• Land conversions and island queries can happen repeatedly

Approach:

• Initially proposed DFS
• Interviewer pointed out the infinite grid → switched to Disjoint Set (Union-Find)
• Got follow-up questions (couldn’t answer all)

📅 Round 2: LLD Round

Discussion:

• Quick intro and resume-based questions

💻 LLD Question: Design Meeting Room Booking System

Requirements:

• Multiple meeting rooms in a building
• Add meeting rooms with capacity
• Book a room for a time slot
• Same room can be re-booked after the slot ends
• Choose optimal room based on participant count
• Send notification after scheduling
• Add meeting to calendar of host and participants
• Handle concurrent booking (locking to prevent double booking)

📅 Round 3: Hiring Manager Round

Topics:

• Self intro + discussion on catalog system

Company-related Questions:

• What platforms do you support?
• Revenue & order breakdown:

Project Discussion in detail

HR Questions:

• Why do you want to join Quince?
• What are you looking for in this role?

📅 Round 4: VP Round

Topics:

• Self introduction
• What do you know about Quince?
• What problem is Quince solving and how?
• Company’s work culture discussion

HR Questions:

• Why do you want to join Quince?
• What motivates you to join us?
• Have you ever acted differently from what you believed was right?
• Any instance where you chose a short-term gain but missed a long-term issue?