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

SDE - 1

PayPal
upvote
share-icon
3 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

expand-icon
Preparation
Duration: 4 months
Topics: Data structures, Algorithms, OOPS, OS, DBMS, Computer Networks, System Design
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Make sure you have your computer science fundamentals very clear.
Tip 2 : You should know the complexity of the code you write and should know the internal implementation of the data structure you use while coding.
Tip 3 : You should know about everything you write in your resume.
Tip 4 : Practice a lot of programming problems. Participate in competitive programming contests.

Application process
Where: Referral
Eligibility: Bachelor's degree with 1+ year of professional experience, good in DSA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Be honest about what you write in your resume.
Tip 2 : Should have at least 2 projects
Tip 3 : Maintain a precise and self-speaking one-page resume.
Tip 4 : Add technical achievements only.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date2 Feb 2022
Coding problem2

This round was held in the morning and was taken by a Senior Engineer. Projects that i have worked till now followed by 2 DSA problems were asked

1. Bursting Balloons

Moderate
40m average time
60% success
0/80
Asked in companies
Samsung ElectronicsAdobeMicrosoft

You are given an array 'ARR' of N integers. Each integer represents the height of a balloon. So, there are N balloons lined up.

Your aim is to destroy all these balloons. Now, a balloon can only be destroyed if the player shoots its head. So, to do the needful, he/ she shoots an arrow from the left to the right side of the platform, from an arbitrary height he/she chooses. The arrow moves from left to right, at a chosen height ARR[i] until it finds a balloon. The moment when an arrow touches a balloon, the balloon gets destroyed and disappears and the arrow continues its way from left to right at a height decreased by 1. Therefore, if the arrow was moving at height ARR[i], after destroying the balloon it travels at height ARR[i]-1. The player wins this game if he destroys all the balloons in minimum arrows.

You have to return the minimum arrows required to complete the task.

Problem approach

We put 2 balloons with 1 as boundaries and also burst all the zero balloons in the first round since they won't give any coins.
The algorithm runs in O(n^3) which can be easily seen from the 3 loops in DP solution.

Try solving now

2. Sub Sort

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

You are given an integer array ‘ARR’. You have to find the length of the shortest contiguous subarray such that, if you sort this subarray in ascending order, then the whole array will be sorted in ascending order.

An array 'C' is a subarray of array 'D' if it can be obtained by deletion of several elements(possibly zero) from the beginning and the end from array 'D'.

Example:

Let’s say we have an array 'ARR' {10, 12, 20, 30, 25, 40, 32, 31, 35, 50, 60}. Then we have to find the subarray {30 , 25 , 40 , 32 , 31 , 35} and print its length = 5 as our output. Because, when we sort this subarray the whole array will be sorted.
Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date7 Feb 2022
Coding problem2

This round was taken by a technical lead. He was interested in my Past work and backend domain Knowledge. Asked 2 DSA problems.

1. Merge k sorted lists

Hard
25m average time
65% success
0/120
Asked in companies
AmazonIntuitPayPal

Given 'k' sorted linked lists, each list is sorted in increasing order. You need to merge all these lists into one single sorted list. You need to return the head of the final linked list.


For example:
Input:
3
3
4 6 8
3
2 5 7 
2
1 9

Output:
1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 

Explanation:
First list is: 4 -> 6 -> 8 -> NULL
Second list is: 2 -> 5 -> 7 -> NULL
Third list is: 1 -> 9 -> NULL
The final list would be: 1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9 -> NULL
Problem approach

Pair up \text{k}k lists and merge each pair.

After the first pairing, \text{k}k lists are merged into k/2k/2 lists with average 2N/k2N/k length, then k/4k/4, k/8k/8 and so on.

Repeat this procedure until we get the final sorted linked list.

Try solving now

2. Russian Doll Envelopes

Hard
50m average time
50% success
0/120
Asked in companies
UberFacebookHSBC

You are given a set of ‘N’ rectangular envelopes. The height and width of each envelope are given by arrays, ‘height’ and ‘width’ respectively, each consisting of ‘N’ positive integers. The height, width of the ith envelope is given by ‘height[i]’ and ‘width[i]’ respectively.

You can put one envelope inside another envelope if and only if both the height and width of one envelope is strictly greater than the height and width of the other envelope.

What is the maximum number of envelopes you can Russian doll? (put one inside other)

Note
Rotation of envelope is not allowed, that is, height and width can’t be exchanged
Problem approach

Sort the array. Ascend on width and descend on height if width are same.
Find the longest increasing subsequence based on height.
Since the width is increasing, we only need to consider height.
[3, 4] cannot contains [3, 3], so we need to put [3, 4] before [3, 3] when sorting otherwise it will be counted as an increasing number if the order is [3, 3], [3, 4]

Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration45 minutes
Interview date11 Nov 2022
Coding problem2

The last round lasts for about 45 minutes, and a mix of both technical and behavioral questions were asked. Some operating system questions followed by some behavioral questions were asked.

1. Operating System Questions

What is method overloading?
What is the meaning of method overriding?
How can data abstraction be accomplished?
What is Thrashing?
What is Banker's Algorithm?
What is Deadlock?
How can we prevent Deadlock?

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Be clear with the explanation
Tip 2 : If any question requires explanation use the resource that is provided for explaining
Tip 3 : Study the most important questions. 

2. Puzzle Question

There are 3 ants sitting on three corners of a triangle. All ants randomly pick a direction and start moving along edge of the triangle. What is the probability that any two ants collide?

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Be clear with the explanation
Tip 2 : If any question requires explanation use the resource that is provided for explaining
Tip 3 : Study the most important questions. 

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
company logo
SDE - 1
4 rounds | 6 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
4913 views
1 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
4 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
1834 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
2 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
1710 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
4 rounds | 6 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
2783 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
Companies with similar interview experiences
company logo
SDE - 1
5 rounds | 12 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
115097 views
24 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
4 rounds | 5 problems
Interviewed by Microsoft
58238 views
5 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
SDE - 1
3 rounds | 7 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
35147 views
7 comments
0 upvotes