D.E.Shaw interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 1

D.E.Shaw
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3 rounds | 10 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 5 months
Topics: Data Structures, OOPS, OS, Dynamic Programming, Algorithms
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Must do Previously asked Interview as well as Online Test Questions.

Tip 2 : Go through all the previous interview experiences from Codestudio and Leetcode.

Tip 3 : Do at-least 2 good projects and you must know every bit of them.


 

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: Above 7 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Have at-least 2 good projects explained in short with all important points covered.

Tip 2 : Every skill must be mentioned.

Tip 3 : Focus on skills, projects and experiences more.


 

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration60 minutes
Interview date4 Jan 2021
Coding problem2

Timing - Flexible morning 9 AM-9PM
Environment - online

1. Incremental Partitioning

Easy
0/40
Asked in companies
Expedia GroupD.E.Shaw

You are given two integers N and K, you need to find the number of ways to divide N into k non-empty groups such that size of group[i] >= group[i - 1] for each valid i. Print it modulo 1e9 + 7.

Problem approach

We can use a recursive approach to find the number of ways to divide N into K groups incrementally.

Try solving now

2. Max Game

Easy
25m average time
70% success
0/40
Asked in companies
IntuitAdobeD.E.Shaw

You are given 'N' numbers and you have to play a game using them. In one move you have to pick any two numbers 'A' and 'B' and replace them by their sum 'A+B'. Doing this gives you a penalty of 'A+B'. Note that the count of elements reduces by 1 every time you take 2 numbers and replace them by their sum. The game ends when there is only one element left. Your task is to minimise the penalty during the game.

You need to return the minimum possible penalty you can have when the game ends.

Problem approach

The idea is to work with the min priority queue.

Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration40 minutes
Interview date6 Jan 2021
Coding problem2

Timing - 2PM-2:40PM
Environment - Online with lead engineer of their company

1. Maximum Difference Of Zeros And Ones In A Binary String

Moderate
15m average time
85% success
0/80
Asked in companies
D.E.ShawAmdocs

You are given a binary string. You are supposed to find the maximum difference between the number of zeros(0's) and the number of ones(1's) in any substring of the given string.

Note:
Binary String is a string that consists of only ‘0’s and ‘1’s.

A string ‘A’ is said to be a substring of string ‘B’ if ‘A’ can be obtained by deleting several characters(possibly none) from the start of ‘B’ and by deleting several characters(possibly none) from the end of ‘B’.

The substring must have a length greater than or equal to 1.
Problem approach

The idea is to assign values to ‘0’s and ‘1’s virtually. We are assigning the value of every ‘0’ as 1, and the value of every ‘1’ as -1 since every ‘0’ will contribute 1 and every ‘1’ will contribute -1 to the answer in any substring. Hence, we are keeping the value of ‘0’ as positive and ‘1’ as negative. We are not changing the string or using a new array to store the weights. In the run time, when we’ll come across any ‘0’ or ‘1’, we’ll add or subtract according to the assigned weights.

Try solving now

2. Median in a stream

Hard
50m average time
50% success
0/120
Asked in companies
OlaInfo Edge India (Naukri.com)Samsung

Given that integers are read from a data stream. Your task is to find the median of the elements read so far.

Median is the middle value in an ordered integer list. If the size of the list is even there is no middle value. So the median is the floor of the average of the two middle values.

For example :
[2,3,4] - median is 3.
[2,3] - median is floor((2+3)/2) = 2.


Problem approach

The idea is to use two heaps, one max - heap and one min - heap. The max-heap will be used to represent elements that are less than the effective median, and min-heap will be used to represent the elements that are greater than the effective median.
After processing the incoming element, the number of elements in heaps differ utmost by 1 element and this will be the case when there are odd number of elements. Thus the heap having more number of elements will give its root value as median. When both the heaps contains same number of elements, average of heaps root data is the effective median.

Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date6 Jan 2021
Coding problem6

Timing - 5 PM-6 PM

Mostly CS fundamentals questions

1. Operating System Question

What is Thrashing ? Why does it occur ? What is the CPU doing during Thrashing?
 

2. Operating System Question

What are the necessary conditions for Deadlock? 

 

3. Operating System Question

What is the difference between a process and a thread?

 

4. SQL Question

Write an SQL Query for finding information of the employee having 2nd highest salary

5. Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days

Moderate
15m average time
85% success
0/80
Asked in companies
Morgan StanleyAmazonCoinbase

You are the owner of a Shipment company. You use conveyor belts to ship packages from one port to another. The packages must be shipped within 'd' days.


The weights of the packages are given in an array 'weights'. The packages are loaded on the conveyor belts every day in the same order as they appear in the array. The loaded weights must not exceed the maximum weight capacity of the ship.


Find out the least-weight capacity so that you can ship all the packages within 'd' days.

Try solving now

6. Operating System Question

Deadlock Avoidance and prevention techniques

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

How do you remove whitespace from the start of a string?

Choose another skill to practice
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