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

SDE - Intern

D.E.Shaw
upvote
share-icon
3 rounds | 8 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

expand-icon
Preparation
Duration: 6 months
Topics: Dynamic Programming, OOPS, OS, Data Structure (heaps), LLD
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Practice at least 250 - 300 Questions from online platforms
Tip 2 : Be consistent in giving contest.
Tip 3 : Practice mock interviews with your friends.
Tip 4 : Mention at least 2 good projects in your resume.

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 8 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Follow some standard resume format and add 2-3 projects with explanations in point, also include technologies used in the project.
Tip 2 : Add your achievements in the resume in points.
Tip 3 : Make sure you add all the technologies you are aware of in your resume and also, add links to competitive profiles (if you have good coding profiles).

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration90 minutes
Interview date4 Aug 2021
Coding problem2

Contest was scheduled for 6PM and test link was provided to every eligible candidate.

1. Count Triplets

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonPayPalDunzo

You have been given an integer ‘X’ and a non-decreasing sorted doubly linked list with distinct nodes.

Your task is to return the number of triplets in the list that sum up to the value ‘X’.

Problem approach

Step 1 : Find the greater_left array. greater_left[i] represents the number of elements greater than a[i] and in left side of it ( from 0 to i-1 ).
Step 2 : Find the smaller_right array. smaller_right[i] represents the number of elements smaller than a[i] and in right side to it ( from i+1 to n-1 )
Step 3: The final answer will be the sum of the product of greater_left[i] and smaller_right[i] for every index.

Try solving now

2. LCS of 3 strings

Hard
45m average time
50% success
0/120
Asked in companies
UberD.E.Shaw

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

This problem is similar to fining LCS of two strings.

The idea is to take a 3D array to store the 
length of common subsequence in all 3 given 
sequences i.e., L[m + 1][n + 1][o + 1]. 

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date4 Aug 2021
Coding problem4

Interview started at 11 AM on Hackerrank platform

1. Merge Two Sorted Arrays

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

Ninja has been given two sorted integer arrays/lists ‘ARR1’ and ‘ARR2’ of size ‘M’ and ‘N’. Ninja has to merge these sorted arrays/lists into ‘ARR1’ as one sorted array. You may have to assume that ‘ARR1’ has a size equal to ‘M’ + ‘N’ such that ‘ARR1’ has enough space to add all the elements of ‘ARR2’ in ‘ARR1’.

For example:

‘ARR1’ = [3 6 9 0 0]
‘ARR2’ = [4 10]
After merging the ‘ARR1’ and ‘ARR2’ in ‘ARR1’. 
‘ARR1’ = [3 4 6 9 10]
Problem approach

This problem was similar to merging two array with condition that we can to merge in decreasing order.

Try solving now

2. Operating System

  • Explain Virtual function (vptr and vtable).
  • Multiple Inheritance and Diamond Problem.
  • Page replacement algorithm.
  • Concept of virtual memory.
  • Thrashing
Problem approach

Tip 1 : Read about OOPS and OS concepts thoroughly.
Tip 2 : Read topic wise articles from internet

3. Operating System

Dining Philosopher problem using Semaphore, mutex lock with pseudo code.

Problem approach

Tip 1: Read and practice OS concepts.

4. 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 problem has a solution using priority queue.

Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date4 Aug 2021
Coding problem2

The interview started at 7 PM and the interviewer were helpful.

1. System Design

Design data structure to implement a text editor. I was made to code following operations ( they often asked to write in the most readable and optimal way )
Insertion at any location
Deletion of word from any location
Undo 
Redo
Copy/Paste

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Practice such problems from online platforms
Tip 2 : Also understand the internal working of different standard DS.

2. Operating System

  • How cin and cout work
  • What is operator overloading
  • Explain malloc and free in C.
  • What is the difference between endl and \n.
  • What is the difference between strongly typed and weakly typed languages, dynamic and static languages, and classify C++ and python based on the same?
  • What will happen if I do:

              int arr[2]; 

              while(true)

              arr++;

  • What is Inter Process Communication?
  • Explain Page replacement algorithm.
  • Explain file handling in C++ and what happened if we open a 10gb file in a computer with 4gb RAM.
Problem approach

Tip 1 : Read OOPS and OS concepts from internet thoroughly.

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
Similar interview experiences
SDE - Intern
1 rounds | 1 problems
Interviewed by D.E.Shaw
1096 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
SDE - Intern
2 rounds | 3 problems
Interviewed by D.E.Shaw
2236 views
1 comments
0 upvotes
SDE - Intern
3 rounds | 6 problems
Interviewed by D.E.Shaw
701 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
SDE - Intern
3 rounds | 6 problems
Interviewed by D.E.Shaw
865 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
Companies with similar interview experiences
company logo
SDE - Intern
3 rounds | 6 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
15605 views
4 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - Intern
4 rounds | 7 problems
Interviewed by Microsoft
15499 views
1 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - Intern
2 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
10216 views
2 comments
0 upvotes