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

Software Engineer

PayPal
upvote
share-icon
4 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

expand-icon
Preparation
Duration: 5 months
Topics: Arrays, Strings, DP, Trees, Graphs, Linked Lists, Stacks, Queues
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Be strong with basics 
Tip 2 : Learn any one programming language end to end.
Tip 3 : Attempting Regular contests on various coding platforms

Application process
Where: Company Website
Eligibility: Above 8 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Be honest and clear on the topics you know
Tip 2 : Be confident on all the projects you mentioned in resume end to end

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration90 minutes
Interview date7 Nov 2020
Coding problem2

late Morning

1. Painting Fences

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
AmazonPayPalCodenation

You are given ‘N’ fences. Your task is to find the total number of ways to paint fences using 2 colors only such that at most 2 adjacent fences are painted with the same color.

As the answer can be too large, return the answer modulo 10^9 + 7.

For Example:
Consider If N = 2, then there can be 4 different ways to color fences such that at most 2 adjacent fences have the same color-:
[ [0, 1],
  [1, 0],
  [1, 1],
  [0, 0] ]
Hence, the answer is 4.
Problem approach

First I had couple of greedy solutions in mind, later on analysis I tried applying dynamic programming approach.
It was working.

Try solving now

2. Detect Cycle In A Directed Graph

Easy
0/40
Asked in companies
PayPalShareChatJUSPAY

Given a directed graph, check whether the graph contains a cycle or not. Your function should return true if the given graph contains at least one cycle, else return false.

Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration30 minutes
Interview date25 Nov 2020
Coding problem1

Technical Interview. The round went on for about 20 min

1. Painter's Partition Problem

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
OYOHSBCPayPal

Given an array/list of length ‘n’, where the array/list represents the boards and each element of the given array/list represents the length of each board. Some ‘k’ numbers of painters are available to paint these boards. Consider that each unit of a board takes 1 unit of time to paint.


You are supposed to return the area of the minimum time to get this job done of painting all the ‘n’ boards under a constraint that any painter will only paint the continuous sections of boards.


Example :
Input: arr = [2, 1, 5, 6, 2, 3], k = 2

Output: 11

Explanation:
First painter can paint boards 1 to 3 in 8 units of time and the second painter can paint boards 4-6 in 11 units of time. Thus both painters will paint all the boards in max(8,11) = 11 units of time. It can be shown that all the boards can't be painted in less than 11 units of time.


Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration30 Minutes
Interview date27 May 2022
Coding problem2

Technical interview 2

1. Cycle Detection in a Singly Linked List

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

You are given a Singly Linked List of integers. Return true if it has a cycle, else return false.


A cycle occurs when a node's next points back to a previous node in the list.


Example:
In the given linked list, there is a cycle, hence we return true.

Sample Example 1

Problem approach

solved using slow pointer and fast pointer approach.

Try solving now

2. Reverse Linked List

Moderate
15m average time
85% success
0/80
Asked in companies
WalmartHCL TechnologiesInfo Edge India (Naukri.com)

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?
Try solving now
04
Round
Medium
HR Round
Duration40 Minutes
Interview date15 Dec 2020
Coding problem1

Hiring Manger, timing was late morning

1. Basic HR Questions

More about project, what is my contribution, why did I select the project and it's importance,
Personality questions: more on how comfortable i am working with large team, contribution.
Technologies: technologies i was interested and how i explore

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Be confident 
Tip 2 : Maintain good communication verbally and through video

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
Software Engineer
4 rounds | 7 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
1447 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
Software Engineer
3 rounds | 6 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
2470 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
Software Engineer
3 rounds | 5 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
3780 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
Software Engineer
3 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by PayPal
6480 views
0 comments
0 upvotes
Companies with similar interview experiences
company logo
Software Engineer
3 rounds | 7 problems
Interviewed by Optum
7976 views
1 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
Software Engineer
5 rounds | 5 problems
Interviewed by Microsoft
10147 views
1 comments
0 upvotes
company logo
Software Engineer
2 rounds | 4 problems
Interviewed by Amazon
4447 views
1 comments
0 upvotes