The night before placement season morning:
Placement were going to start from next morning. Preparation was still "nill bate sannata". I Cursed myself for not preparing, but still kept strolling in neema ji’s room, discussing that nothing can be done now, so let’s just do the same thing which we have been doing from last many months i.e. watching all the news related to AAP.
1. Oracle: The extraordinary ordeal for me
This was the first company in which I was eligible to sit. Interview process started at around 8 A.M.
I round:
Few things about bus architecture, what is size of int and pointer, on which factors it depends, difference between 32 bit and 64 bit architecture, concept of thrashing. He then moved me for the second round immediately.
II round: Interviewer explained that he want all the answers from compiler’s point of view and started by asking some compiler related questions, impact of loops on code, Loop unrolling, code optimization from compiler’s perspective etc. he then asked the working of the load instruction. When I started answering this question he dragged my answer to the level of pipelining, memory management, page table, traps and virtual memory. Finally he looked satisfied and forwarded me to the HR.
III round: This was HR round. HR asked me why I wanted to join Oracle, why should she select me, why I want to work on this profile. I am bad at giving HR, but I would say it went good. I was asked to give 2 photographs and to wait. Since they were giving offers after 3rd round only so I thought that I made it through.
IV round: There were only 3 rounds for all the people, up-till this point one 8 pointer guy was selected and all other people were rejected except me and one of my class mate. We were asked that the manager which will be assigned to us( if I got selected) is in Bangalore and wants to interview us. I was sure that this was just a formality and I have been selected. This was telephonic round. After having general introductions my 1 hour ordeal started. He started asking deep level networking and unix questions and I suck at both. He asked what happen in your laptop NIC when u enter a website URL. I tried my best but I had no idea what to say. After asking many similar question he moved on to unix asking how does inter-process communication takes place what are pipes, their limitations etc. I was not happy after this round and I was sure that neither was my, could have been, manager. After this they took similar telephonic round of my class mate. After 15 minutes they rejected the other person and not me which meant that I have cleared this round also.
V round: After 5 min they called me in. I was sure that they are going to offer me this job now but as I sat down, the interviewer fired a question. I was perplexed and asked him is there a one more technical round, to which he nodded in yes. Oracle was interviewing me since 8 am and still they were not sure whether to reject me or not. I had no energy left to give one more technical round but fortunately they asked me only C and data structure questions and I answered each one of them perfectly. This went so good that I started making plans of enjoying my vacations from next day. Now it was just a matter of minutes before HR is going to offer me job.
After few minutes HR came and said “we are not selecting you AS OF NOW”. We are putting u on hold and we will tell you after 3 days. Meanwhile u can sit for other companies”. I was disappointed by oracle thinking that it took them 5 hell of rounds to arrive at this decision. It was 11 PM, I was hungry and next interview was at 8 am next day.
RESULT: 3 round for other people, 5 round for me. Rejected.
2. CitiCorp & the fear of getting selected:
It is a good company with good package but it is a financial firm due to which me and one of my friend(we call him Barney) were not very excited to join it. Since we had cracked the written round we had to sit for interview. We decided that we would try not to get selected in it, since lot more good CS companies were yet to visit the campus. There were only 2 rounds. To other people they asked some technical questions but to our surprise, both the rounds were HR type for me and Barney. They asked questions like are u planning to go for higher education, is location fine with you etc. After both the rounds, we were afraid of getting selected. When the result was declared 4 students were selected and we were NOT among them. We became very happy and greeted each other. On seeing us celebrating, people around us thought that we poor guys have misheard our names and are under the impression of getting offer from CitiCorp. Any ways we left immediately as we had Nvidia’s interview lined up that day.
RESULT: Rejected after final round
3. Nvidia: when I did a Ghajini
I round: First two questions were
RESULT: Rejected in I round
4. Flipkart: Why you no select me??
I round: Interviewer asked me 3 questions in this round.
II round:
RESULT: Rejected after II round
5. Informatica: It all ends here
After cracking both the written rounds I got a call at 12:45 PM from Informatica that my interview will start at 1:00 pm through skype. After setting up my laptop I waited. My interview started at around 2 PM.
I round: After preliminary introduction technical round started. Interviewer asked me to write a program to count the number of trees possible corresponding to a given inorder traversal. I tried my best, the interviewer was very helpful and was constantly encouraging and helping me to complete the program. Finally I was able to give a working program. Then he asked me to write the recurrence equation to find the complexity of my program which I was able to write after he gave me some hint, but he looked happy with me answer. Then he asked some more tree questions after which I was moved immediately to 2nd round.
II round: Interviewer asked me about my project which I explained nicely. He then asked some string questions to which I was able to give solution using tries data structure. He passed me to the 3rd round.
III round: The interviewer asked one array based question which was something like you are given an array of numbers, if I give you an index you have to tell me how many numbers are there in the array which are less than the number at the given index and are positioned to the right of this index. I gave many approaches, all of them were working but every time complexity comes out to be quadratic. He encouraged me again and again to reduce the complexity but gave no hint this time. After trying hard for good 10 min I was finally able to reduce the complexity. Interviewer seem delighted with my solution. He then asked me to write code for pre increment and post increment operator overloading in C++. I didn’t remember the syntax but I write the pseudo code and explained it, he looked satisfied by my answer and passed me for the IV round. Similarly I was able to clear IV round also. Interviewer asked few technical questions after which I was asked to wait until they call.
V round: It was 6:30 PM . After half an hour I got a call from HR for my next round. This was the toughest round for me. He asked me about the company, why I want to join, about the products of Informatica etc. After approx. 45 minutes interview ended. I was satisfied with this round. HR said that they will inform the placement cell about their decision. It was 8:00 pm, I was feeling hungry but my Groupon interview was scheduled in next 5 min, so I ran for it.
6. Groupon: The perfect dessert
I round: This was a puzzle round. Interviewer asked me two puzzles I was able to answer 1 and half :P when he passed me to the 2nd round.
II round: Given a stream of numbers, find 10th largest. About my project and project related questions. Then a BST question, something like u have a BST and a number u have find two node having sum equal to this number as efficiently as possible. After I told him the approach I was asked to write the code for it which I gladly wrote, after which he moved me for the 3rd round.
III round: Given a 2D linked list which is sorted from top to bottom and from left to right in increasing order. Write a code for making a single sorted linked list. I write this code easily. Interviewer then asked me same binary tree question which was asked in 2nd round to which I said that this question has been asked in previous round. He then asked another binary tree question which was more complex and asked me to write code for it. After taking some time and his constant support and encouragement I was able to write that code. He looked satisfied and asked me wait for the result.
Finally The NEWS:
At around 11, I got the news that I have been selected by Informatica. I immediately called my home to inform my family. After a short while Groupon result was declared and I was selected in that too. I called home again to give them a Déjà vu experience telling that I got selected :P. I was feeling hungry yet content, I along with my friends immediately moved towards our canteen.
RESULT: Selected in Informatica after 5 rounds of Skype interview and selected in Groupon after 3 rounds.
Placement season is the testing time when you need your friends at your side, friends who make you believe that you can do it, that rejection is not the end of the story. All my friends especially Abhinna, Gaurav (Goti bhai), Shreyash (our PR saab!) and Arpit (Neema ji) constantly supported me and stayed with me during all this process. Nothing would have been possible without them being there.
Placement were going to start from next morning. Preparation was still "nill bate sannata". I Cursed myself for not preparing, but still kept strolling in neema ji’s room, discussing that nothing can be done now, so let’s just do the same thing which we have been doing from last many months i.e. watching all the news related to AAP.
1. Oracle: The extraordinary ordeal for me
This was the first company in which I was eligible to sit. Interview process started at around 8 A.M.
I round:
- WAP to reverse a link list : Done
- Reverse link list using recursion. Interviewer said that my approach was right, I persisted that it is right and had to dry run my code before him after which he accepted that it is right.
Few things about bus architecture, what is size of int and pointer, on which factors it depends, difference between 32 bit and 64 bit architecture, concept of thrashing. He then moved me for the second round immediately.
II round: Interviewer explained that he want all the answers from compiler’s point of view and started by asking some compiler related questions, impact of loops on code, Loop unrolling, code optimization from compiler’s perspective etc. he then asked the working of the load instruction. When I started answering this question he dragged my answer to the level of pipelining, memory management, page table, traps and virtual memory. Finally he looked satisfied and forwarded me to the HR.
III round: This was HR round. HR asked me why I wanted to join Oracle, why should she select me, why I want to work on this profile. I am bad at giving HR, but I would say it went good. I was asked to give 2 photographs and to wait. Since they were giving offers after 3rd round only so I thought that I made it through.
IV round: There were only 3 rounds for all the people, up-till this point one 8 pointer guy was selected and all other people were rejected except me and one of my class mate. We were asked that the manager which will be assigned to us( if I got selected) is in Bangalore and wants to interview us. I was sure that this was just a formality and I have been selected. This was telephonic round. After having general introductions my 1 hour ordeal started. He started asking deep level networking and unix questions and I suck at both. He asked what happen in your laptop NIC when u enter a website URL. I tried my best but I had no idea what to say. After asking many similar question he moved on to unix asking how does inter-process communication takes place what are pipes, their limitations etc. I was not happy after this round and I was sure that neither was my, could have been, manager. After this they took similar telephonic round of my class mate. After 15 minutes they rejected the other person and not me which meant that I have cleared this round also.
V round: After 5 min they called me in. I was sure that they are going to offer me this job now but as I sat down, the interviewer fired a question. I was perplexed and asked him is there a one more technical round, to which he nodded in yes. Oracle was interviewing me since 8 am and still they were not sure whether to reject me or not. I had no energy left to give one more technical round but fortunately they asked me only C and data structure questions and I answered each one of them perfectly. This went so good that I started making plans of enjoying my vacations from next day. Now it was just a matter of minutes before HR is going to offer me job.
After few minutes HR came and said “we are not selecting you AS OF NOW”. We are putting u on hold and we will tell you after 3 days. Meanwhile u can sit for other companies”. I was disappointed by oracle thinking that it took them 5 hell of rounds to arrive at this decision. It was 11 PM, I was hungry and next interview was at 8 am next day.
RESULT: 3 round for other people, 5 round for me. Rejected.
2. CitiCorp & the fear of getting selected:
It is a good company with good package but it is a financial firm due to which me and one of my friend(we call him Barney) were not very excited to join it. Since we had cracked the written round we had to sit for interview. We decided that we would try not to get selected in it, since lot more good CS companies were yet to visit the campus. There were only 2 rounds. To other people they asked some technical questions but to our surprise, both the rounds were HR type for me and Barney. They asked questions like are u planning to go for higher education, is location fine with you etc. After both the rounds, we were afraid of getting selected. When the result was declared 4 students were selected and we were NOT among them. We became very happy and greeted each other. On seeing us celebrating, people around us thought that we poor guys have misheard our names and are under the impression of getting offer from CitiCorp. Any ways we left immediately as we had Nvidia’s interview lined up that day.
RESULT: Rejected after final round
3. Nvidia: when I did a Ghajini
I round: First two questions were
- A simple bit manipulation question to which I wrote a very bad but working code.
- If u are given a number like 1234 u have to output: bitwise reverse of 4, bitwise reverse of 3, bitwise reverse of 2, bitwise reverse of 1. I wrote an inefficient program for that. He then asked me to improve it but I couldn’t. After 10 minutes I gave up.
RESULT: Rejected in I round
4. Flipkart: Why you no select me??
I round: Interviewer asked me 3 questions in this round.
- Given a place which has patches of land and water, u have to find all the islands in that area.
- You are given N*N mesh like topology. At any intersection point there can be an enemy. On encountering an enemy from sideways u lose 10% health, on encountering from below u lose 20% health and if u pass over an enemy u lose 50% health. your objective is to find an optimized path from a given starting point to reach the last row of the mesh. U can only move sideways and downwards.
- One more DP question which I don’t remember.
II round:
- You have a round board half of which is painted white and other half black, u have two sensors which can detect colors. The board is rotating. Using two sensors find direction of rotation (clockwise or anticlockwise). I couldn’t answer this within hos time limits. He moved on to another question.
- You are given a dictionary of a language which is unknown to u. It is not necessary that every letter in the alphabet of the language has a word starting with it in the dictionary. You have to find all the alphabets. I took time and ultimately gave him a working solution, but he was not happy, he said that it could have been done using a DAG.
RESULT: Rejected after II round
5. Informatica: It all ends here
After cracking both the written rounds I got a call at 12:45 PM from Informatica that my interview will start at 1:00 pm through skype. After setting up my laptop I waited. My interview started at around 2 PM.
I round: After preliminary introduction technical round started. Interviewer asked me to write a program to count the number of trees possible corresponding to a given inorder traversal. I tried my best, the interviewer was very helpful and was constantly encouraging and helping me to complete the program. Finally I was able to give a working program. Then he asked me to write the recurrence equation to find the complexity of my program which I was able to write after he gave me some hint, but he looked happy with me answer. Then he asked some more tree questions after which I was moved immediately to 2nd round.
II round: Interviewer asked me about my project which I explained nicely. He then asked some string questions to which I was able to give solution using tries data structure. He passed me to the 3rd round.
III round: The interviewer asked one array based question which was something like you are given an array of numbers, if I give you an index you have to tell me how many numbers are there in the array which are less than the number at the given index and are positioned to the right of this index. I gave many approaches, all of them were working but every time complexity comes out to be quadratic. He encouraged me again and again to reduce the complexity but gave no hint this time. After trying hard for good 10 min I was finally able to reduce the complexity. Interviewer seem delighted with my solution. He then asked me to write code for pre increment and post increment operator overloading in C++. I didn’t remember the syntax but I write the pseudo code and explained it, he looked satisfied by my answer and passed me for the IV round. Similarly I was able to clear IV round also. Interviewer asked few technical questions after which I was asked to wait until they call.
V round: It was 6:30 PM . After half an hour I got a call from HR for my next round. This was the toughest round for me. He asked me about the company, why I want to join, about the products of Informatica etc. After approx. 45 minutes interview ended. I was satisfied with this round. HR said that they will inform the placement cell about their decision. It was 8:00 pm, I was feeling hungry but my Groupon interview was scheduled in next 5 min, so I ran for it.
6. Groupon: The perfect dessert
I round: This was a puzzle round. Interviewer asked me two puzzles I was able to answer 1 and half :P when he passed me to the 2nd round.
II round: Given a stream of numbers, find 10th largest. About my project and project related questions. Then a BST question, something like u have a BST and a number u have find two node having sum equal to this number as efficiently as possible. After I told him the approach I was asked to write the code for it which I gladly wrote, after which he moved me for the 3rd round.
III round: Given a 2D linked list which is sorted from top to bottom and from left to right in increasing order. Write a code for making a single sorted linked list. I write this code easily. Interviewer then asked me same binary tree question which was asked in 2nd round to which I said that this question has been asked in previous round. He then asked another binary tree question which was more complex and asked me to write code for it. After taking some time and his constant support and encouragement I was able to write that code. He looked satisfied and asked me wait for the result.
Finally The NEWS:
At around 11, I got the news that I have been selected by Informatica. I immediately called my home to inform my family. After a short while Groupon result was declared and I was selected in that too. I called home again to give them a Déjà vu experience telling that I got selected :P. I was feeling hungry yet content, I along with my friends immediately moved towards our canteen.
RESULT: Selected in Informatica after 5 rounds of Skype interview and selected in Groupon after 3 rounds.
Placement season is the testing time when you need your friends at your side, friends who make you believe that you can do it, that rejection is not the end of the story. All my friends especially Abhinna, Gaurav (Goti bhai), Shreyash (our PR saab!) and Arpit (Neema ji) constantly supported me and stayed with me during all this process. Nothing would have been possible without them being there.