Yellow.ai Interview Experience | DSA, DBMS & System Design

Hello everyone,

Profile:

• YOE: Close to 2 years
• Current Company: Product-based company

Sharing my recent interview experience with Yellow.ai.

I was contacted by their recruiter, and after a brief discussion about my experience and preferences, two interview rounds were scheduled:

1. R1: DSA + DBMS
2. R2: System Design

Round 1: DSA + DBMS

The interviewer gave me two coding problems, one easy and one easy-medium. Both were manageable, and I solved and discussed them within around 30 minutes. We then moved on to the DBMS section.

Problem 1: Maximum Altitude Gain

A trekking app records the altitude (in metres) at every checkpoint a trekker passes, in order. Trails rise and fall many times over a multi-day trek. At the end of each trek, the app awards a Signature Climb badge: the largest altitude gained from one checkpoint to any later checkpoint. The two checkpoints need not be next to each other; only their altitudes matter. If the trek only went downhill, the badge shows 0.

Your task: given the list of checkpoint altitudes, return the badge value.

Example:

Input: trek = [1000, 1200, 800, 1175, 700, 1500]

Output: 700

Problem 2: Count Groups of Diseased Plants

You are given a grid containing healthy (H) and diseased (D) plants. The farm owner wants to assign one person to handle each group of diseased plants. Find the number of people required.

Example:

Input:

[
    ['H', 'H', 'D', 'D', 'H'],
    ['H', 'H', 'D', 'H', 'H'],
    ['D', 'H', 'H', 'H', 'D'],
    ['D', 'D', 'H', 'H', 'D'],
    ['H', 'H', 'H', 'D', 'H']
]

Output: 4

Here, H represents a healthy plant and D represents a diseased plant. The task is to count the connected groups of diseased plants.

DBMS: Storing a Theatre's Seat Layout

The interviewer asked me to open BookMyShow, select a movie, and choose a theatre. The problem was to design how the theatre's seat layout should be stored in a database.

The layout includes seats, aisles, gaps, and different sections. The main discussion was about how to represent this layout in the database and ensure that it renders correctly on the frontend.

Round 2: System Design

This was a purely conversational system design round. There was no coding involved.

Problem statement: Design a Conference Room Booking Application.

The discussion focused on the data model, relationships between different entities, and the overall booking flow.

We also discussed handling different time zones and how to model the relationships between users, conference rooms, and bookings.

Overall Experience

Both rounds were conversational, and the interviewers discussed the problems in detail. The first round covered DSA and DBMS, while the second focused entirely on system design.

Hope this helps anyone preparing for Yellow.ai interviews. All the best!