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Zepto | Sr. SDE | 6.5 yrs | Unprofessional panel
Summary
I interviewed for a Senior SDE role at Zepto, which included Data Structures & Algorithms and System Design rounds. Unfortunately, both rounds were characterized by highly unprofessional behavior from the interview panel.
Full Experience
During my interview for the Senior SDE position at Zepto, I encountered an unprofessional panel across both the DSA and System Design rounds.
In the first round, the interviewer, though initially kind, was in a meeting room where his colleagues interrupted him twice for a cake-cutting celebration. Despite my interview being ongoing, he eventually joined them, going on mute and turning off his camera for some time, which was quite disruptive.
The system design round was even more concerning. The interviewer asked me to open Notepad and start writing while he went to eat. He returned after 20 minutes and only then began asking questions. System design is meant to be an interactive session, but I was left without any direction for a significant period. When he finally came back, he started challenging my notes while he was still eating, and kept his camera off the entire time. This created a very uncomfortable and non-collaborative interview environment.
Interview Questions (3)
Given a 2D grid grid of 0s and 1s, where 0s represent land and 1s represent water. An island is a maximal 4-directionally connected group of 0s. A closed island is an island that is completely surrounded by 1s (water). That is, none of the 0s of a closed island are on the border of the grid. The task is to return the number of closed islands.
Given an array of integers heights representing the histogram's bar height where the width of each bar is 1, find the area of the largest rectangle in the histogram.
Design a scalable and highly available ride-hailing service similar to Ola or Uber. The discussion should cover key components such as user authentication, ride request processing, driver matching, real-time location tracking, fare estimation, payment processing, and notification systems. Consider data models, API design, and trade-offs for different architectural choices to ensure performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
Preparation Tips
My preparation for this interview involved focusing on the material I used for a previous Google interview. Detailed insights into my preparation strategy and relevant questions can be found in my Google interview preparation blog.