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

SDE - 1

Qualcomm
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3 rounds | 8 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I have completed my engineering in 2016 in Information Technology and pursued a Master's degree called MSIT(Google it if you are not aware of it. It is a different degree from a usual M.tech degree) from IIIT-H. Later in 2018, I cracked an internship at NVIDIA in Pune as a part of my campus placements. After working for 6 months as an intern at NVIDIA, I could not get a PPO for internal reasons. Later in 2018, I was jobless. I did not know what to do. So I searched for jobs online. But unfortunately, all the companies were seeking at least 3 to 5 years of experience which I clearly did not have. So, in search of jobs, I wasted an year without up-skilling myself. Then my father advised me to prepare for banks. So I took his advice and started to go for bank coaching in July 2019. I cleared IBPS Prelims in Sept 2019 but I failed in the Mains exam in Jan 2020. I was shattered and did not have any idea what to do. It was already Jan 2020. 2 years just flew by and I still did not have any job. In Feb 2020, I visited IISc Bangalore on International Science Day on Feb 29th. I clearly remember this day not just because it was a leap day but the experience was memorable and that is when I decided to prepare for GATE 2021 seriously and wanted to do another Master's degree from a reputed institute. I took GATE coaching video lectures from Ravindrababu Ravula who has helped me a lot in my journey of GATE. I cracked GATE-2021 with an All India Rank of 965 and joined IIIT-Bangalore (after a 3 year gap in my career) as an M.Tech student. Journey at IIIT-B is for some other day but in short, it was inspiring and memorable. IIIT-B helped me in cracking a job (internship) at IBM and I am lucky to get this job during our campus placements.
Application story
It was a campus placement. So there was nothing much to do for the application. We had to apply for the companies that we were interested in.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I was rejected for this role because I code in Java and I was asked to implement threads in C++ without using any libraries. So, this is the reason why I could not clear my 2nd interview round. Hence suggesting readers who are preparing to work on kernel level programming.
Preparation
Duration: 2 months
Topics: Data structures, Kernel programming, Databases, Operating Systems(Linux mainly), Aptitude
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Prepare bank exams syllabus as their written test does not involve coding
Tip 2 : Aptitude and reasoning play a very important role. Do not ignore these sections
Tip 3 : C and C++ fundamentals must be very strong. Increment, Decrement operators kind of topics must not be left

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: Above 7 CPGA and no current backlogs.
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Make sure to include at least one project you have done in C++.
Tip 2 : Boosts your resume to have a project on system calls and kernel programming.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration90 minutes
Interview date7 Aug 2022
Coding problem5

There were no coding rounds in this test. It had 3 sections. You cannot skip any section. Each section was of 30 mins. One section consists of questions from aptitude and reasoning. Another section consists of questions from C programming. Last section consists of questions from Computer science fundamentals such as DSA, CN, OS. Questions range from Easy to Medium. Prepare aptitude and reasoning section well as that section is the game changer for everyone.

1. Puzzle

A container contains 30 liters of milk. From this container 5 liter of milk was taken out and replaced by water. This process was repeated further two times. How much milk is now contained by the container?

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Read and practice bank exam syllabus for scoring good in Aptitude and Reasoning section

2. OOPS Question

What are different storage classes? What is inheritance?

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Sharpen your C++ and OOPS basics.

3. Height of Binary Tree

Easy
15m average time
80% success
0/40
Asked in companies
GrabBarclaysAmazon

The height of a tree is equal to the number of nodes on the longest path from the root to a leaf.


You are given an arbitrary binary tree consisting of 'n' nodes where each node is associated with a certain value.


Find out the height of the tree.


Example :
Input: Let the binary tree be:

Output: 2

Explanation: The root node is 3, and the leaf nodes are 1 and 2.

There are two nodes visited when traversing from 3 to 1.
There are two nodes visited when traversing from 3 to 2.

Therefore the height of the binary tree is 2.
Problem approach

Tip 1 : Stay strong and keep revising CS fundamentals.

Try solving now

4. OS Questions

Choose which best describes the concept of virtual memory

5. Delete Node In A Linked List

Easy
15m average time
80% success
0/40
Asked in companies
HSBCAdobeCIS - Cyber Infrastructure

You are given a Singly Linked List of integers and a reference to the node to be deleted. Every node of the Linked List has a unique value written on it. Your task is to delete that node from the linked list.

A singly linked list is a linear data structure in which we can traverse only in one direction i.e. from Head to Tail. It consists of several nodes where each node contains some data and a reference to the next node.

Note:

• The reference to the head of the linked list is not given.
• The node to be deleted is not a tail node.
• The value of each node in the Linked List is unique.
• It is guaranteed that the node to be deleted is present in the linked list.

A sample Linked List-

singly_linkedlist

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration45 minutes
Interview date10 Aug 2022
Coding problem1

Timing was from 10:30AM to 11:15AM. It was an online environment conducted on Hackerrank. The interviewer was very chill. He was from Hyderabad office. He asked questions in coding, OS, CN basics.

1. First Unique Character in a String

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
MicrosoftIBMLivekeeping (An IndiaMART Company)

Given a string ‘STR’ consisting of lower case English letters, the task is to find the first non-repeating character in the string and return it. If it doesn’t exist, return ‘#’.

For example:

For the input string 'abcab', the first non-repeating character is ‘c’. As depicted the character ‘a’ repeats at index 3 and character ‘b’ repeats at index 4. Hence we return the character ‘c’ present at index 2.
Try solving now
03
Round
Hard
Video Call
Duration45 minutes
Interview date10 Aug 2022
Coding problem2

Timing was from 12PM to 12:45PM. It was an online environment conducted on Hackerrank. The interviewer was neutral and was not that supportive. He was from Hyderabad office. He asked questions in C++ and Thread programming.

1. Reverse the String

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

You are given a string 'STR'. The string contains [a-z] [A-Z] [0-9] [special characters]. You have to find the reverse of the string.

For example:

 If the given string is: STR = "abcde". You have to print the string "edcba".
follow up:
Try to solve the problem in O(1) space complexity. 
Try solving now

2. Odd Before Even

Moderate
25m average time
70% success
0/80
Asked in company
HSBC

You are given two sorted linked lists of length ‘N1’ and ‘N2’ respectively. Your task is to create a linked list with common elements such that all common odd elements are before common even elements.

Note: The relative order inside both the even and odd groups should remain as it was in the input.

You just need to return the head of the new linked list formed, don't print the elements.

Try solving now

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

What is recursion?

Choose another skill to practice
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