Worst Walmart Software Engineer 3 Interview Experience Bangalore
Summary
I recently had a challenging interview experience with Walmart for a Software Engineer 3 position in Bangalore, which ultimately resulted in a rejection despite my efforts in both the technical and theoretical rounds.
Full Experience
I shared my worst interview experience with Walmart for a Software Engineer 3 role in Bangalore. The hiring drive took place on November 16th, 2023.
Round 1: Data Structures & Algorithms
This round consisted of two coding questions. I solved and coded the first problem in 15 minutes. After some thinking, the interviewer provided the second problem, which I also solved and coded in about 15 minutes.
Round 2: Core Java
This round involved a barrage of theoretical questions, all within 45 minutes. The interviewer ended the session 10 minutes early. I answered most questions appropriately and correctly, though I struggled a bit with JVM architecture and forgot to make the private constructor for the singleton design pattern. Despite these minor hiccups, the interviewer seemed impressed and discussed potential work at Walmart.
Result
I was unfortunately rejected. Recruiters stopped responding to my calls, and I only learned about the rejection through a friend who referred me.
Interview Questions (17)
Given a sorted array of size n, it will contain numbers from 1 to n-1, with one number repeated. The task is to print the repeated number. Expected time complexity is O(log n) using binary search.
Given two sorted arrays and a target number, return two elements (one from each array) such that their sum is closest to the given number. All elements of the second array would be greater than those in the first array. Expected time complexity is O(m * log n) using binary search.
Theoretical question: What is Java?
Theoretical question: Explain why Java is platform independent.
Theoretical question: Discuss Java primitive data types.
Theoretical question: Discuss Java String.
Theoretical question: Discuss Java String Pool.
Theoretical question: Discuss Java Collections.
Theoretical question: Compare HashSet vs TreeSet.
Theoretical question: Compare HashMap vs TreeMap.
Theoretical question: Explain the internal implementation of HashSet.
Theoretical question: Compare ArrayList vs LinkedList.
Theoretical question: Discuss JVM Architecture and its working.
Theoretical question: Discuss the internal implementation of Garbage Collection in Java.
Theoretical question: Discuss Multithreading in Java.
Theoretical question: Discuss definitions and meanings of almost all design patterns.
Coding question: Implement an example of a Singleton design pattern.