Staff Engineer VMware Inc interview experience

Interview rounds

Round

Medium

Video Call

Duration60 minutes

Interview date11 Nov 2021

Coding problem2

In first round, I was not able to complete code but explained the solution.
Tip : Try to practice coding even if you have 10 years of experience.

1. Search In Rotated Sorted Array

Easy

12m average time

85% success

0/40

Asked in companies

You have been given a sorted array/list 'arr' consisting of ‘n’ elements. You are also given an integer ‘k’.

Now the array is rotated at some pivot point unknown to you.

For example, if 'arr' = [ 1, 3, 5, 7, 8], then after rotating 'arr' at index 3, the array will be 'arr' = [7, 8, 1, 3, 5].

Now, your task is to find the index at which ‘k’ is present in 'arr'.

Note :

1. If ‘k’ is not present in 'arr', then print -1.
2. There are no duplicate elements present in 'arr'. 
3. 'arr' can be rotated only in the right direction.

Example:

Input: 'arr' = [12, 15, 18, 2, 4] , 'k' = 2

Output: 3

Explanation:
If 'arr' = [12, 15, 18, 2, 4] and 'k' = 2, then the position at which 'k' is present in the array is 3 (0-indexed).

Problem approach

This question could be solved using Binary search which would have a time complexity of O(log n). The approach would be:
1. Find the mid = (low + high)/2
2. If key is present at middle point, return mid.
3. If arr[low….mid] is sorted
a) If key to be searched lies in range from arr[low] to arr[mid], apply binary search for arr[low..mid].
b) Else apply for arr[mid+1..high]
4. Else (arr[mid+1..high] must be sorted)
a) If key to be searched lies in range from arr[mid+1]
to arr[high], apply binary search for arr[mid+1..high].
b) Else recur for arr[low..mid]

Try solving now

2. Minimum Jumps

Moderate

25m average time

75% success

0/80

Asked in companies

Bob lives with his wife in a city named Berland. Bob is a good husband, so he goes out with his wife every Friday to ‘Arcade’ mall.

‘Arcade’ is a very famous mall in Berland. It has a very unique transportation method between shops. Since the shops in the mall are laying in a straight line, you can jump on a very advanced trampoline from the shop i, and land in any shop between (i) to (i + Arr[i]), where Arr[i] is a constant given for each shop.

There are N shops in the mall, numbered from 0 to N-1. Bob's wife starts her shopping journey from shop 0 and ends it in shop N-1. As the mall is very crowded on Fridays, unfortunately, Bob gets lost from his wife. So he wants to know, what is the minimum number of trampoline jumps from shop 0 he has to make in order to reach shop N-1 and see his wife again. If it is impossible to reach the last shop, return -1.

Problem approach

Greedy approach can be used here. If observed carefully , it can be concluded that it is always optimal to shift the elements towards the median element among the persons or the center person among all the persons present. The number of jumps will always be minimum when we shift points to the median
Steps :
1. Create an array/ list to store the indexes of the persons present.
2. Find the median of the created list. All the other persons will now be made to sit around this person as this will give the minimum number of jumps that are required to be made.
3. Initialize a variable ans that stores the minimum jumps required.
4. Now traverse the created list and for every index i find the median element and update ans as:
ans= ans+ abs(arr[i] – medianElement)

At the end, ans will store the final result.
Time complexity : O(n)
Auxiliary Space : O(n)

Try solving now

Round

Medium

Video Call

Duration45 minutes

Interview date12 Nov 2021

Coding problem1

Round 2 went very good. They gave a design question in this round.

1. System Design Question

Design file searching functionality for windows/mac (indexing of file names).

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Design your structure and functions according to the requirements and try to convey your thoughts properly to the interviewer so that you do not mess up while implementing the idea .
Tip 2 : Before you jump into the solution always clarify all the assumptions you’re making at the beginning of the interview. Ask questions to identify the scope of the system. This will clear the initial doubt, and you will get to know what are the specific detail interviewer wants to consider in this service.

Round

Medium

Video Call

Duration45 minutes

Interview date15 Nov 2021

Coding problem1

The third round was also a design round.

1. System Design Question

Design MakeMyTrip .

Problem approach

Tip 1: Firstly, remember that the system design round is extremely open-ended and there’s no such thing as a standard answer. Even for the same question, you’ll have a totally different discussion with different interviewers.
Tip 2:Before you jump into the solution always clarify all the assumptions you’re making at the beginning of the interview. Ask questions to identify the scope of the system. This will clear the initial doubt, and you will get to know what are the specific detail interviewer wants to consider in this service.
Tip 3 : Design your structure and functions according to the requirements and try to convey your thoughts properly to the interviewer so that you do not mess up while implementing the idea .