CropIn Technology interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 1

CropIn Technology
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2 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I completed my engineering in 2016 in Information Technology and pursued a Master's degree called MSIT(Google it if you are not aware of it. It is a different degree from a usual M.tech degree) from IIIT-H. Later, in 2018, I cracked an internship at NVIDIA in Pune as a part of my campus placements. After working six months as an intern at NVIDIA, I could not get a PPO for internal reasons. Later, in 2018, I was jobless. I did not know what to do. So, I searched for jobs online. Unfortunately, all the companies sought at least 3 to 5 years of experience, which I did not have. So, in search of jobs, I spent a year without up-skilling myself. Then, my father advised me to prepare for banks. So, I took his advice and started to go for bank coaching in July 2019. I cleared IBPS Prelims in Sept 2019 but failed the Mains exam in Jan 2020. I was shattered and did not have any idea what to do. It was already Jan 2020. 2 years just flew by, and I still had no job. In Feb 2020, I visited IISc Bangalore on International Science Day on Feb 29th. I clearly remember this day not just because it was a leap day. Still, the experience was memorable, and that is when I decided to prepare for GATE 2021 seriously and wanted to do another Master's degree from a reputed institute. I took GATE coaching video lectures from Ravindrababu Ravula, who helped me greatly in my GATE journey. I cracked GATE-2021 with an All India Rank of 965 and joined IIIT-Bangalore (after a three-year career gap) as an M.Tech student. My journey at IIIT-B is for some other day, but it was inspiring and memorable. IIIT-B helped me crack a job (internship) at IBM, and I am lucky to get this job during our campus placements.
Application story
It was a campus placement. So, there was nothing much to do for the application. We had to apply for the companies that we were interested in.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was rejected because I could not answer well in the areas of web development and front-end frameworks, as I was more of a backend guy.
Preparation
Duration: 5 months
Topics: Data structures, Operating Systems, Projects in my resume, Computer Networks, Databases (SQL)
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Aptitude and reasoning play a very important role. Do not ignore these sections
Tip 2 : Practice Coding in websites like CodingNinjas which provide same questions as that of online assessment.
Tip 3 : Have projects in web development as they have a wide range of tech stack.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: Above 7 CPGA and no current backlogs.
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Have projects that consists of various front-end frameworks and back-end technologies.
Tip 2 : Having a certification in Java or C++ would be a plus.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration120 minutes
Interview date7 Sep 2022
Coding problem2

Test took place at 5PM in our institute.

1. Alien Dictionary

Easy
10m average time
70% success
0/40
Asked in companies
Thought WorksNagarro SoftwareTCS

Ninja is learning a new but strange language known as Alien Language. Alien language possesses the same alphabets as of English language, but their order is different. The order of letters are given as ‘ORDER’ string. Ninja has ‘N’ words in the ‘WORDS’ array. Ninja’s task is to check whether the words of ‘WORDS’ are sorted lexicographically in this alien language or not.

Note: ‘ORDER’ consists of all 26 letters of English alphabet.

For Example
If ‘WORDS’ = ["word","world","row"], ‘ORDER’ = "worldabcefghijkmnpqstuvxyz",the answer will be ‘NO’ as first and second words are not lexicographically sorted as ‘l’ comes before ‘d’ in alien language.
Try solving now

2. Bus Routes

Moderate
30m average time
70% success
0/80
Asked in companies
American ExpressUberMcKinsey & Company

This time Ninja is helping a lost passenger on a bus stop to reach his destiny with the minimum number of buses he needs to change, on the bus stop a chart is present which contains 'N' arrays. An array 'A' denotes the route that a bus will take, such that A[i] denotes the bus stop 'i'th bus will travel to.

For Example
If the bus route is [3, 6, 7], then it will travel  in sequence 
3 > 6 > 7 > 3 > 6 > 7….

You can travel between the bus stations through buses only. You are given the source bus station and destination bus station. You need to determine the minimum number of buses you need to reach the destination. If it is not possible to reach destination return -1.

Note:
Values of A[i] are distinct.
Problem approach

This is a very famous coding question in Leetcode. I have used the same approach to this question and got all the test cases passed except one. I did not know where I went wrong.

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date8 Sep 2022
Coding problem4

It was an online interview which took place at 11AM via Google meet. The interviewer was chill and was very comforting.

1. Target Sum

Moderate
0/80
Asked in companies
ZSOLX GroupAmazon

You are given an array ‘ARR’ of ‘N’ integers and a target number, ‘TARGET’. Your task is to build an expression out of an array by adding one of the symbols '+' and '-' before each integer in an array, and then by concatenating all the integers, you want to achieve a target. You have to return the number of ways the target can be achieved.

For Example :
You are given the array ‘ARR’ = [1, 1, 1, 1, 1], ‘TARGET’ = 3. The number of ways this target can be achieved is:
1. -1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
2. +1 - 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
3. +1 + 1 - 1 + 1 + 1 = 3
4. +1 + 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 = 3
5. +1 + 1 + 1 + 1 - 1 = 3
These are the 5 ways to make. Hence the answer is 5.
Problem approach

I explained the bruteforce solution and then explained the time and space complexity.
As usual, he asked me to optimize and then gave the DP solution with which he was satisfied.

Try solving now

2. Move Zeroes To End

Moderate
30m average time
70% success
0/80
Asked in companies
AmazonMicrosoftThought Works

Given an unsorted array of integers, you have to move the array elements in a way such that all the zeroes are transferred to the end, and all the non-zero elements are moved to the front. The non-zero elements must be ordered in their order of appearance.

For example, if the input array is: [0, 1, -2, 3, 4, 0, 5, -27, 9, 0], then the output array must be:

[1, -2, 3, 4, 5, -27, 9, 0, 0, 0].

Expected Complexity: Try doing it in O(n) time complexity and O(1) space complexity. Here, ‘n’ is the size of the array.

Try solving now

3. Project Related Question

Why did I choose AngularJS for my projects? Why not ReactJS?

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Do not take a side saying you are not comfortable in ReactJS or other way around.
Tip 2 : I explained saying I was new to both frameworks and starting with Angular because Angular community reach is more and Stack Overflow had solutions to almost every question in Angular framework.
Tip 3 : I also said that given the opportunity, I would love to work in ReactJS also.

4. DBMS

Query to return the 3rd highest salary in the employee table.

Problem approach

I used ORDER BY and LIMIT to return the top 3 employees but could not return that specific row of 3rd highest salary. 
This is also where I failed to create an impression. Hence I could not clear this round.

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

What is recursion?

Choose another skill to practice
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