Salesforce MTS interview experience 3 years
Summary
I interviewed for a Member of Technical Staff (MTS) role at Salesforce with 3 years of experience. My process included an Online Assessment, two Data Structures & Algorithms rounds, and a final technical interview, ultimately resulting in a rejection.
Full Experience
My interview journey for the MTS role at Salesforce, with my 3 years of experience from a product-based startup and an ECE background from a Tier-3 college, began with an Online Assessment.
Round 1 – Online Assessment (HackerRank)
The assessment consisted of 6 MCQs and 2 coding problems. The first problem asked me to find the maximum possible even sum from a subset of an array, including negative values. The second problem was about determining the minimum moves required to make two arrays identical by incrementing or decrementing single digits of elements. I managed to clear all test cases for both problems, and after 1.5 weeks, I received an interview call.Round 2 – DSA Round
This round started with a brief 10-minute introduction. The interviewer then shared a HackerRank link with two problems. The first was an overlapping-intervals problem, which I solved in about 20 minutes. Unexpectedly, given my ECE background, the interviewer then posed a surprise question: perform arithmetic operations without using standard arithmetic operators. I discussed bitwise-based approaches and, though I couldn't provide a full solution, I conveyed partial ideas, which took about 30 minutes. After that, we moved to the second actual DSA problem, a fairly hard graph traversal question. The interviewer only asked for my approach, and I explained how I would use BFS/Dijkstra, along with my reasoning, which seemed to satisfy them. Within 10 minutes, I received a call to rejoin for the next round.Round 3 – Final Technical Round
The final technical round presented a problem: given multiple transactions like 'A B 100' (A paid 100 for B), compute the minimum transactions needed to settle all accounts. I tried to clarify the requirements, but the interviewer was unresponsive to my follow-up questions. I explained my thought process and proceeded to implement my approach. Towards the end, the interviewer noted my logical reasoning was acceptable but seemed unsatisfied with the overall solution. When I inquired about the coding feedback, they simply stated HR would share it. Later that evening, I received a rejection email.Interview Questions (4)
Given an array values[], find the maximum possible even sum that can be obtained by selecting any subset of its elements. Values may be negative, and selecting no elements is allowed. It's guaranteed that at least one even value exists in the array.
Given two arrays, determine the minimum number of moves required to make them identical. A move is defined as incrementing or decrementing a single digit of any element in either array. Reordering of elements is not allowed.
Perform arithmetic operations (e.g., addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) without using the standard arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /).
You are given multiple transactions in the form A B 100, meaning person A paid 100 on behalf of person B. You need to compute the minimum number of transactions required to settle all accounts so everyone’s net balance becomes zero.