SDE - 1 Grappus interview experience | Anonymous

Interview rounds

Round

Medium

Video Call

Duration60 minutes

Interview date3 Apr 2022

Coding problem1

Before sharing the interview experience, I would suggest all of you prepare for a better product-based company rather than applying to these small startups.
They rejected me after taking 6 rounds without giving any feedback.

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The interviewer started with an introduction and then moved on to the projects on which I have worked in the company and asked me to explain the last working feature I have developed in my company.
We kept on discussing that feature only like why did you choose hooks or how you like to increase the performance of the order flow.
I answered him by saying we can go with async programming, he was satisfied with it but asked me to learn more about worker threads.

Then for the other 30 mins, he asked me to design Linkedln as it was my very first system design interview so I was quite nervous but I managed to create all the tables and how we will be designing them.
He asked me how would you increase the performance of the database if the no. of records are in millions.
I gave him approach of elastic search but he wanted me to talk about indexes.

1. System Design Question

Design Linkedin

Round

Medium

Video Call

Duration60 minutes

Interview date8 Apr 2022

Coding problem2

This round was more focused on my problem-solving skills and all the questions were of DSA only.
The interviewer directly jumped into google docs for asking the question after taking the introduction.

1. Anagram Pairs

Moderate

30m average time

60% success

0/80

Asked in companies

You are given two strings 'str1' and 'str1'.

You have to tell whether these strings form an anagram pair or not.

The strings form an anagram pair if the letters of one string can be rearranged to form another string.

Pre-requisites:

Anagrams are defined as words or names that can be formed by rearranging the letters of another word. Such as "spar" can be formed by rearranging letters of "rasp". Hence, "spar" and "rasp" are anagrams.

Other examples include:

'triangle' and 'integral'
'listen' and 'silent'

Note:

Since it is a binary problem, there is no partial marking. Marks will only be awarded if you get all the test cases correct.

Problem approach

It was a pretty basic problem, I explained to him multiple solutions and also did a dry run on some sample cases so that he can get an idea of what I am writing.
I took 2 frequency arrays and solved it though it could be done by a single array also.

Try solving now

2. Reverse Linked List

Moderate

15m average time

85% success

0/80

Asked in companies

Given a singly linked list of integers. Your task is to return the head of the reversed linked list.

For example:

The given linked list is 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4-> NULL. Then the reverse linked list is 4 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1 -> NULL and the head of the reversed linked list will be 4.

Follow Up :

Can you solve this problem in O(N) time and O(1) space complexity?

Problem approach

This problem was also quite basic, I created one class in which I kept two pointer one for head and other for tail.
I wrote code for reversing the Linkedlist in O(n) time complexity and O(1) space complexity.
He asked me to run it on some inputs and it worked perfectly fine.

Try solving now

Round

Hard

Video Call

Duration60 minutes

Interview date12 May 2022

Coding problem2

This round was taken by the head of engineering, this round was a mixture of DSA as well as system design.

1. Equilibrium Index

Easy

0/40

Asked in companies

You are given an array Arr consisting of N integers. You need to find the equilibrium index of the array.

An index is considered as an equilibrium index if the sum of elements of the array to the left of that index is equal to the sum of elements to the right of it.

Note:

1. The array follows 0-based indexing, so you need to return the 0-based index of the element.
2. Note that the element at the equilibrium index won’t be considered for either left sum or right sum.
3. If there are multiple indices which satisfy the given condition, then return the left-most index i.e if there are indices i,j,k…. which are equilibrium indices, return the minimum among them
4. If no such index is present in the array, return -1.

Problem approach

I came up with a naive approach using two loops with quadratic time complexity, as expected he asked me to improve it.
I came up with another approach using two arrays so the time complexity was reduced to o(n) and space was increased to o(n).
He asked me to improve this, I did the same thing using a single array and time complexity was still linear only.
He wanted me to improve this further so that we can reduce it to o(n) time and o(1) space with some hints from him I was able to do it using two pointers.

Try solving now

2. Technical Question

Explain to me the last feature on which you have worked, the discussion on Node.JS, and some tech-related discussions.

Round

Easy

Online Coding Interview

Duration90 Minutes

Interview date18 May 2022

Coding problem0

HR asked me to complete one gaming round before moving to a further round.
The test was conducted on their own platform and it was just to test your cognitive skills.

Round

Easy

HR Round

Duration30 Minutes

Interview date24 May 2022

Coding problem0

Introduction
Salary expectations
Hobbies
Why do you want to leave your current org?
This round was easily passed and I was pretty sure that it went well.

Round

Easy

HR Round

Duration20 Minutes

Interview date22 Apr 2022

Coding problem0

This round was taken by their CEO, he started with an introduction, and how was my overall experience with Grappus?
What do I know about their company/ their services?
What are the best practices that you follow in your org when writing code and why do you want to leave your current org.
I answered everything in the best possible manner and I was expecting an offer letter from them.
I waited for their reply and they mailed me that I was rejected, I asked HR by calling her but she said that we don't have any feedback, I was ready to negotiate in terms of salary also.
I wasted my 2-3 weeks, I wanted to know the reason at least.
I would not recommend anyone to waste their time in such companies rather than that keep preparing for some product-based companies.