Phonepe Interview Experience for SDE-2
Giving back to the community!!
Background: SDE1 at FAANGM
Experience: 1.5-2 yrs
Applied to SDE position for 1-3yrs experience at PhonePe in mid Jan’24 through referral, recruiter reached out within a week and interview rounds were scheduled.
Round 1- Machine Coding
It involved solving a LLD problem given 2hrs before the time for submission, post which their was a discussion over the submitted solution with a Senior SDE, discussing tradeoff b/w different scenarios and approach for solution.
This round went pretty well, it lasted for 1 hr.
Round 2- PS/DS
This round was taken by a senior SDE, 2 questions were asked and 1 puzzle
1.) Chocolate distribution problem ( Greedy):
Given an array arr[] consisting of N positive integers representing the ratings of N children, the task is to find the minimum number of candies required for distributing to N children such that every child gets at least one candy and the children having the higher rating get more candies than its neighbours.
Examples:
Input: arr[] = {1, 0, 2}
Output: 5
Explanation:
Consider the distribution of candies as {2, 1, 2} that satisfy the given conditions. Therefore, the sum of candies is 2 + 1 + 2 = 5, which is the minimum required candies.
I was able to solve this problem in optimal TC.
2. There are a total of numCourses courses you have to take, labeled from 0 to numCourses – 1. You are given an array prerequisites where prerequisites[i] = [ai, bi] indicates that you must take course bi first if you want to take course ai
Here the interviewer wanted a solution better than BFS, I wasn’t able to optimise it further from BFS.
3. Puzzle:
Given a function rand6() that returns random numbers from 1 to 6 with equal probability, implement one-liner function rand12() using rand6() that returns random numbers from 1 to 12 with equal probability.
This puzzle is explained in GFG, I provided few solutions but there was issue with equal probability and interviewer was looking for the exact solution
This round went okayish.
Round 3- HM
This round was taken by Senior Engeering Manager, the discussion revolved around standard behavioral questions along with some technical questions on my past experience. Few questions were:
Why are you looking for a switch?
Tell about a recent project?
What datastore is used in your team, sql vs nosql?
How do you keep yourself up-to-date with new technologies?
Verdict: Rejected, majorly due to my low confidence in HM round and okayish DSA round.