Synthesized from 16 candidate submissions for ALL.
Overall good interview experience, but the candidate was rejected. The candidate struggled with the CDC concept during the HLD round.
Design a key-value store and an index with constraints where all keys for a specific key must be of the same type (e.g., if key1 is an Integer, all keys must be Integers).
Design a key-value store and an index
Solved two DSA problems and one LLD problem: 1) Search for an element in a sorted rotated array, 2) Minimum transactions to settle accounts (Splitwise variation), 3) Design Red Bus Schema with subroutes between major routes.
Search for an element in sorted rotated array
Minimum transactions to settle accounts
Design Red Bus Schema
Designed a system to track leaders for a contest (e.g., referrals leader). Candidate was unaware of CDC (Change Data Capture) concept, which hindered solving the problem.
Design a system which keeps track of leaders for some contest
The candidate went through a rigorous interview process at CRED for an SDE-1 Backend role in Bengaluru. Despite having no prior backend experience and fumbling on some technical terms, the candidate's problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding impressed the interviewers. The interviews were notably long and challenging, conducted in a single day. The candidate received an offer within a day of completing the final round.
Online Assessment: 90 minutes. 1 LC medium and 2 LC hard level questions. Topics included Strings, Trees, DP, and Combinatorics. Candidate had 75 minutes to complete the assessment. Struggled with a tree-diameter algorithm and spent time debugging.
The candidate completed an online assessment consisting of 1 medium and 2 hard LeetCode-style questions within 75 minutes. Topics included Strings, Trees, DP, and Combinatorics. The candidate faced challenges with a tree-diameter algorithm and debugging.
The candidate was given a HackerRank link to implement a full-fledged application using OOPs, Tries, and other concepts. The interviewer evaluated the candidate's implementation skills, optimization techniques, code modularity, and clean code. The candidate finished the implementation but forgot to submit the test, which was later sent via email as a zipped project.
The interviewer used Google Docs to discuss puzzle questions, problem-solving, low-level design, data structures, and algorithms. The focus was on trees, hashmaps, tries, DSU, and probabilistic algorithms. The candidate engaged in an in-depth discussion, and the interviewer was impressed with the responses.
The candidate discussed past projects, system design concepts (load balancing, concurrency, in-server caches), and future goals. The interviewer was impressed by the candidate's resume and problem-solving skills, despite the candidate fumbling on some backend terminology like Memcached. The candidate struggled with HR-type questions due to fatigue.
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