D.E.Shaw interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview
SDE - Intern
D.E.Shaw
2 rounds | 4 Coding
problems
Rejected
Interview preparation journey
Journey
I started my preparation in the early days of my college when I started practicing the leetcode and the code studio problems. In the end, I have done more than 300 questions on the leetcode platform.
Application story
I applied to this company throw the on-campus opportunity as this company always visit my college for hire.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was rejected because i was not able to explain all the concept with the correct accuracy.
Preparation
Duration: 4 months
Topics: Data Structures, Algorithms, Object Oriented Programming, Time Complexity, Programming Language Implementation
Tip 1 : For an intern position in any big company, the most important thing is practicing data structures. Solve as many questions as you can on platforms like Coding Ninjas. First start picking up questions topic-wise and once you gain a decent confidence in every topic, start hitting harder questions randomly on various platforms. (Practice a minimum of 300 questions).
Tip 2 : If you are stuck at solving any question, instead of looking up for a code solution try to read discussions and see various approaches people are applying. This will surely make you prepared for the way in which the interviews are designed. Always keep a clock ticking while solving a problem as spending too much time while practicing surely makes you slow in the Online Tests and Interviews.
Tip 3 : Again specifically for internship preparation, focus mainly on the subjects that have been taught to you till now. As in many colleges Database Management, Operating Systems and Computer Networks are not taught till the 4th semester so you could easily focus on subjects in your curriculum. OOPS concepts are very important!
Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 7 CGPA for CS, 8 CGPA for ECE and EE
Tip 1 : In On-Campus internship drives it is generally not required to have a very charming resume with a load of projects as the companies understand the candidate as a 4th semester student.
Tip 2 : But still if there is even a single decent project genuinely build by the student then it is more than sufficient.
Interview rounds
01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration90 minutes
Interview date2 Aug 2020
Coding problem3
It was conducted in the evening at around 7:00 p.m.
The hackerrank environment is clearly the best for conducting coding exams as it provides a decent interface for debugging and testing purposes.
There were 3 questions- 1 of easy level and 2 of medium level.
1. Pythagorean Triplets
Moderate
35m average time
70% success
0/80
Asked in companies
You are given an array of n integers (a1, a2,....,an), you need to find if the array contains a pythagorean triplet or not.
An array is said to have a pythagorean triplet if there exists three integers x,y and z in the array such that x^2 + y^2 = z^2.
Note
1. The integers x,y and z might not be distinct , but they should be present at different locations in the array i.e if a[i] = x, a[j] = y and a[k] = z, then i,j and k should be pairwise distinct.
2. The integers a,b and c can be present in any order in the given array.
2. Ways to arrange balls
Hard
40m average time
50% success
0/120
Asked in companies
Given ‘a’ balls of type ‘A’, ‘b’ balls of type ‘B’ and ‘c’ balls of type ‘C’. You need to find the total number of ways to arrange the balls in a straight line such that adjacent balls are of different types.
In other words, find the total ways to arrange the given balls in such a way that no two balls of the same type are adjacent.
For Example :
Suppose we have 2 balls of type ‘A’, 1 ball of type ‘B’ and 1 ball of type ‘C’, following are the ways to arrange them in the required fashion.
ABCA
ABAC
ACBA
ACAB
BACA
CABA
Hence, there is a total of six ways.
3. LCS of three strings
Hard
45m average time
50% success
0/120
Asked in companies
Given three strings A, B and C, the task is to find the length of the longest common sub-sequence in all the three strings A, B and C.
A subsequence of a string is a new string generated from the original string with some characters(can be 0) deleted without changing the relative order of the remaining characters. (For eg, "cde" is a subsequence of "code" while "cdo" is not). A common subsequence of two or more strings is a subsequence that is common to all the strings.
Note
You don’t have to print anything, it has already been taken care of. Just complete the function.
If there is no common subsequence, return 0.
Problem approach
1. It was a variation of a direct standard problem so I solved it on the go though it was of medium level.
2. The exact approach I applied is given in the link given in the problem statement.
02
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date5 Aug 2020
Coding problem1
The round was conducted on CodePair platform which provides a IDE along with a video call for interviews.
There were 2 interviewers and both were friendly.
I was first asked about the various subjects I have studied in my curriculum. Then I was asked about my favourite programming language to which I answered Python.
After this, they asked various confusing questions based on function calling, argument passing and pass by object reference concept in Python.
Then they asked about the implementation of dictionary in Python and wanted me to design one with the help of lists(arrays) and optimize its search, add and delete operations. (Could be done with hashing and probing).
Then they asked questions from subjects like Computer Architecture and Theory of Computation (Basic questions were asked so you should just remember the key topics in the subject).
1. Delete a Node from Linked List
Moderate
40m average time
67% success
0/80
Asked in companies
You have been given a linked list of integers. Your task is to write a function that deletes a node from a given position, 'POS'.
Note :
Assume that the Indexing for the linked list always starts from 0.
If the position is greater than or equal to the length of the linked list, you should return the same linked list without any change.
Illustration :
The following images depict how the deletion has been performed.
Image-I :
Image-II :
Problem approach
1. Firstly I asked the interviewer if there was any other node reference given in the linked list.
2. Then I asked if it was a singly or doubly linked list.
3. After that, I was stuck as I was attempting to delete the node memory from the linked list but on expressing my problem the interviewer guided me that I should just delete the data in that node.
4. Then I instantly replied with an algorithm to swap the data of the given node with its next node's data and then change the next pointer of given node to next pointer of the next node i.e. delete the next node of the given position.
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