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

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Thought Works
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5 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 3 Months
Topics: Object Oriented Programming, System Design, Operating System, DBMS, Data Structures and Algorithms (Dynamic Programming, Trees, LinkedList)
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Have good grasp on OOPS since they have a round named Pair Programming round which is focused upon this. 
Tip 2 : Write clean, modular and functional code.
Tip 3 : Practice Data Structures and Algorithms
Tip 4 : You should know breadth and depth of whatever is mentioned in your resume.
Tip 5 : Be loud and clear.

Application process
Where: Hackerearth
Eligibility: It was for 2020 undergraduate
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Make single page resume.
Tip 2 : Mention relevant things on resume.
Tip 3 : Do not put any false things on resume. Projects, internships you are mentioning be ready to answer questions related to it regarding what you solved, idea, databases, design.
Tip 4 : Contribute in open source, participate in hackathons.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration90 minutes
Interview date1 Feb 2020
Coding problem2

We were supposed to give test in any time between 3 PM to 9 PM.

1. Total Unique Paths

Moderate
25m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
BNY MellonCoinDCXAmazon

You are present at point ‘A’ which is the top-left cell of an M X N matrix, your destination is point ‘B’, which is the bottom-right cell of the same matrix. Your task is to find the total number of unique paths from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’.In other words, you will be given the dimensions of the matrix as integers ‘M’ and ‘N’, your task is to find the total number of unique paths from the cell MATRIX[0][0] to MATRIX['M' - 1]['N' - 1].

To traverse in the matrix, you can either move Right or Down at each step. For example in a given point MATRIX[i] [j], you can move to either MATRIX[i + 1][j] or MATRIX[i][j + 1].

Try solving now

2. Count elements in all subtrees

Easy
10m average time
90% success
0/40
Asked in companies
Thought WorksSamsung R&D Institute

You are given an arbitrary tree consisting of 'N' nodes numbered from 0 to 'N' - 1. You need to find the total number of elements in all the subtrees of the given tree. In other words, given a generic tree, find the count of elements in the subtrees rooted at each node.

A subtree of a tree T is a tree S consisting of a node in T and all of its descendants in T. The subtree corresponding to the root node is the entire tree. For better understanding, refer to the image below:-

alt text

Note:
1. The tree will always be rooted at 0. 
2. You can return the count of nodes in any order.
3. The root of any subtree is also counted in the subtree thus the count of nodes in a subtree rooted at a leaf node is 
4. You can return the numbers in any order.
Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration120 minutes
Interview date29 Feb 2020
Coding problem1

Pair Programming Interview( this round is similar to machine coding round) it started around 11 AM

Focus Areas: Problem solving and implementation of extensions.

The pair coding round is focused on OOPS concepts. You are paired with a TWer for this round. They let you code first for an hour and in the next hour they review your code and suggest changes which would improve the code structure, readability and make it modular and reusable and functional.
 

1. Help Ninja to Cross River

Hard
20m average time
80% success
0/120
Asked in companies
FacebookAppleThought Works

Ninja is standing on the edge of a river and wants to cross the river. There is a wooden bridge over the river but some units of the bridge are damaged. Ninja can not step over a damaged unit of the bridge. All the safe units of the bridge are in an array/list ‘SAFE’ which is sorted in increasing order.

Ninja is currently standing on the first safe unit of the bridge and has to reach the last safe unit of the bridge by jumping.

There are some restrictions on the size of jump Ninja can make:

1. The first jump will always be of 1 unit.
2. If Ninja's previous jump was ‘X’ units, his current jump must be either ‘X’ - 1, ‘X’, or ‘X’ + 1 units. 

As Ninja is warming up before crossing the bridge, he asks you for help. You need to find out whether Ninja can cross the river or not and return TRUE if Ninja can cross the river else return FALSE.

For example :

If ‘SAFE’ = [1, 2, 4, 7] then it can shown in below image where :
Red cell means that the unit is damaged.
Green cell means that the unit is safe.
We can see Ninja can reach the last unit by making jumps of size 1 , 2 and 3.

Example

Try solving now
03
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration120 minutes
Interview date29 Feb 2020
Coding problem2

Students who were shortlisted from Pair Programming round was selected for this round around 3 PM. In this round there were two interviewer.

1. Technical Questions

It was more focused on resume they discussed my projects and internships.

1. Asked me to make the tables used in project and discussed the relation between them, joins applied,types of keys, schema. Different types of Normalisation.
2. They asked me to design facebook, discussion around how its features have been implemented(data structures 
used). Different objects and classes which are made use of different object oriented concept like making a class 
abstract.
I had also mentioned some project related to NLP so they asked applications which have been made on that.
Basic OOPS related questions like polymorphism and it's type, different keywords which we use( abstract, final), Constructor chaining.
Working of HashMap in detail, how hashing works why we prefer HashMap.

Difference between paging and segmentation.
What is fregmentation, it's types?

Regarding my interest in open source and whether I have contributed in any project.

2. Middle Of Linked List

Easy
20m average time
80% success
0/40
Asked in companies
NoBrokerIBMHCL Technologies

Given a singly linked list of 'N' nodes. The objective is to determine the middle node of a singly linked list. However, if the list has an even number of nodes, we return the second middle node.

Note:
1. If the list is empty, the function immediately returns None because there is no middle node to find.
2. If the list has only one node, then the only node in the list is trivially the middle node, and the function returns that node.
Try solving now
04
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration30 minutes
Interview date3 Mar 2020
Coding problem0

Leadership Round, it was taken by a senior manager.

He asked me about previous work experience in the internships. How I was a team player? What kind of people I don’t like to work with? Biggest challenges faced by you and how you overcame them? How do you learn new technologies? Give me some situation based question that how I will handle if I am unable to solve some problem and deadline is near. How I will tell some senior person that mine solution is efficient. Do I contribute in open source?

05
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration45 minutes
Interview date3 Mar 2020
Coding problem0

Social Change ( this was the last round)


The last round was social change interview. Thoughtworks believes there are three pillars to a company: Sustainable Business, Software Excellence, and Social Justice. This round is for the third pillar of thoughtworks. I was asked questions about my thought on aritcle 377, What do you think about LGBT rights? What do you think about CAA and protests across the country related to CAA? What do you think about women’s rights? What do you think about reservation? Regarding my interest towards open source contribution, and how can I bring change in society with the help of technology.

So it was basically around this.

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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