Thought work | Interview Experience| Application developer

I recently applied for an Application Developer role (JAVA) at ThoughtWorks through their portal, having 1 year of experience working in a service-based company. Here's how my interview journey unfolded.

Round 1: Online Assessment (OA)

The initial stage was an Online Assessment which comprised MCQ questions on core CS subjects and programming. Thanks to my GATE preparation, I felt confident and managed to answer all the core CS questions, especially those related to OOPS. I didn't do any specific extra preparation for this part.

The coding section of the OA had two questions:

• The first was an array-based problem involving two pointers, which I successfully solved, passing all test cases.
• The second question combined hashing and dynamic programming on strings, and I was able to identify the pattern and solve it as well.

I completed the entire OA within 30-35 minutes, coding everything in Python. To my delight, I was selected for the Code Pairing round!

Round 2: Code Pairing Round

This was my first experience with such a round, and it lasted about 2 hours. I was paired with a ThoughtWorker and tasked with solving a problem using an Object-Oriented Approach.

The round began with:

• Discussions about my skills, current technologies I work with, my current project, and my role within it.
• We then delved into core CS subjects like Computer Networks, DBMS, Data Structures & Algorithms, and Operating Systems (my favorite!). I managed to answer all these questions effectively.
• The main emphasis was on OOPS concepts, where they posed many questions, ranging from basics to advanced topics, requiring real-world examples.
• Following this, we moved onto Java-specific concepts such as HashMap, Collections, JVM, and Java 8 features. I was able to answer about 90% of these, though I did get a bit stuck on some Java-related questions.

For the actual code-pairing part, I was asked to design a Ride Sharing Application. We discussed the desired features, and I explained my proposed implementation strategy. I identified key entities, classes, attributes, functions, and relationships, presenting a high-level view and an ER diagram. I tried to clarify many aspects during the initial implementation phase.

This was where I made several blunders. I couldn't complete the entire code within the given timeframe. They also inquired about the data structures I used and my reasoning, as well as potential code optimizations, which I was able to answer. I got stuck trying to implement the Controller module; by then, my mind was fatigued, and I couldn't think of better solutions.

During this round, I was also asked a coding question similar to LeetCode's 'Greatest Common Divisor of Strings'.

Ultimately, I did not make it to the next rounds. Despite the outcome, I learned a great deal about clean code, design principles, and SOLID patterns from their feedback. I'll definitely keep trying, and I believe something better will come my way soon!