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Associate Software Engineer

Zscaler
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3 rounds | 8 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
In my second year, I did the course of competitive programming from Coding Ninjas which helped me to deep dive into DSA and then I start practicing problem on Codeforces, Codechef and leetcode
Application story
The company visited campus for recruitment for the posts of Associate Software Engineer(Dev Test (C, C++, Java, Python) and Associate Software Engineer ( Developer - C Programming) There were three rounds, Coding round, Technical Interview, and Managerial cum HR round.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I rejected in technical interview round 2 because I do not know networking in deep. For this role you should know theory concept in deep
Preparation
Duration: 3 months
Topics: Dynamic programming, Graph, DSA, OS, Networking
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : DSA 
Tip 2 : CS fundamental (mainly Networking)

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 60% throughout.
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Good Projects
Tip 2 : Do not put false things on resume.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Hard
Online Coding Test
Duration90 minutes
Interview date20 Jan 2023
Coding problem3

It consist of 3 coding question in C language and 1 question is easy and other 2 are medium to hard level.

1. Minimum Number Of Vertices To Reach All Nodes

Moderate
25m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
FacebookTech MahindraMorgan Stanley

Given a directed acyclic graph having ‘N’ nodes. A matrix ‘edges’ of size M x 2 is given which represents the ‘M’ edges such that there is an edge directed from node edges[i][0] to node edges[i][1].

Find the smallest set of vertices from which all the nodes in the graph are reachable.

Note :

Nodes are numbered from 0 to N - 1.

The graph given is connected.

Print the vertices in sorted order.
For Example :
The following is an example of DAG i.e a directed graph with no cycles in it. 

alt
text

In the above graph, we can reach all the vertices from node a.

Problem approach

Intution to this problem is you have to choose least adjacent such that you will light up all the nodes.

i.e.you have to choose minimum adjacent nodes.

so we have two choices either we take or notTake current node say inclusive and exclusive.

recursivelty we can find maximum non adjacent nodes that can be selected by considering all node have same price 1.

if will subtract this max caluefrom total value, we will get our answer.

1) Suppose a data structure as Pair which will store both inc and exc cost.

2) recursively calculate pair value for each nodes.

3) finalize the answer by n-maxAdj

Try solving now

2. Minimum Cost Path

Moderate
25m average time
70% success
0/80
Asked in companies
Goldman SachsOlaSalesforce

You have been given a matrix of ‘N’ rows and ‘M’ columns filled up with integers. Find the minimum sum that can be obtained from a path which from cell (x,y) and ends at the top left corner (1,1).

From any cell in a row, we can move to the right, down or the down right diagonal cell. So from a particular cell (row, col), we can move to the following three cells:

Down: (row+1,col)
Right: (row, col+1)
Down right diagonal: (row+1, col+1)
Problem approach

Dijkstra's algorithm.

Try solving now

3. Jump Game

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

You have been given an array 'ARR' of ‘N’ integers. You have to return the minimum number of jumps needed to reach the last index of the array i.e ‘N - 1’.


From index ‘i’, we can jump to an index ‘i + k’ such that 1<= ‘k’ <= ARR[i] .


'ARR[i]' represents the maximum distance you can jump from the current index.


If it is not possible to reach the last index, return -1.


Note:
Consider 0-based indexing.
Example:
Consider the array 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 
We can Jump from index 0 to index 1
Then we jump from index 1 to index 2
Then finally make a jump of 3 to reach index N-1

There is also another path where
We can Jump from index 0 to index 1
Then we jump from index 1 to index 3
Then finally make a jump of 2 to reach index N-1

So multiple paths may exist but we need to return the minimum number of jumps in a path to end which here is 3.
Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 minutes
Interview date24 Jan 2023
Coding problem3

It is first Technical Interview round. It was focused on DSA and CS fundamentals.

1. Max Product Subset

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

You are given an array/list ‘arr’ of size ‘n’. Your task is to find the maximum product possible by taking any subset of the array/list ‘arr’.

Since the product can be large, return it modulo 10^9+7

For example:
Let arr=[-1,-1,-2,4,3] 

We can take the subset {-1,-2,4,3} which will have the product as 24. We can verify that this is the largest product possible. Hence we return 24.
Problem approach

Create 5 variables to maintain the largest, second-largest, third-largest, smallest, and second smallest. The combination of three would be the maximum product.

Try solving now

2. OS Questions

1. What is Multithreading? 
2. What is semaphore, mutex?
3. What is critical section?

3. Networking Question

Define TCP model and/or OSI model.
The flow of data when a link is clicked.

03
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration60 minutes
Interview date24 Feb 2023
Coding problem2

1. Data Stream As Disjoint Intervals

Moderate
30m average time
70% success
0/80
Asked in company
eBay

You are given a stream of 'n' non-negative integers as the input, and you have to group the stream of integers in the form of disjoint intervals.


Your task is to Implement the ‘DisjointIntervals’ class having the two functions:


1) The first function is ‘addInteger(int val)’, which takes an integer ‘val’ as an argument and adds it to the stream.

2) The second function is ‘getDisjointIntervals()’, which returns a summary of the integers in the stream currently as a list of disjoint intervals.


Example:

Input: 'n' = 5 , stream =  [
                  [1, 1],
                  [1, 3],
                  [2],
                  [1, 2],
                  [2],
                ]

Output: [
          [ [1, 1],  [3, 3] ],
          [ [1,3] ] 
        ]

Explanation: First of all, 1 is added to the stream, and the disjoint interval will be {1, 1}. When 3 will be added to the stream, then the disjoint intervals will be {1, 1}, {3, 3}. But when 2 is added to the stream then the disjoint interval will be {1, 3} as 2 lies between these two sets of disjoint intervals, and both the intervals {1, 1} and {3, 3} merge.
Try solving now

2. Networking Question

1. What is DHCP?
2. What is IP?
3. What is the difference between IPV4 and IPV6?
4. Explain Data Link layer.
5. Explain DNS.

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

Which is a DDL command in SQL?

Choose another skill to practice
Join the Discussion
2 replies
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11 Sep 2023
.....erred light gives me.... creeps. (an,no article), (the,a) ,(an,the)
0 upvotes
0 replies
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20 May 2023

What were the total number of Technical Interview Rounds? Considering those who were selected, how many Technical Interview rounds did they have to go through?

1 upvote
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