My First Big Company Intern Interview Experience:
Status : Student, MS CS
Date : May 22, 2019
Type : Technical phone screen (Back to Back): 50 mins + 10 mins break + 50 mins
Interview 1:
- Tell me about yourself and courses you’ve selected. (Intro)
- Asked complexities of insert, delete, update operations in ArrayList
Algorithmic Question : Given an array of size n, randomly output all the elements one by one.
For example,
Input: int[] nums = {1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 1}
Output: [2,1,1,4,3,2] is one of the outputs.
Note: duplicates numbers are allowed in input array.
Expectation: Space 0(1) and Time 0(n).
Comment: Interviewer was very tight and didn’t offer any kind of help.
Interview 2:
- A quick introduction about me
- Directly stepped into the problem
Algorithmic Question: Given a grid of size m * n, find the maximum sum rectangle from the grid.
For example,
Input: int[] nums =
{{1, 2, -1, 4},
{-8,-3, 4, 2},
{3, 8, 10, 1},
{-4, -1, 1, 7}}
Output: 29
(i.e)
{{-3, 4, 2},
{8, 10, 1},
{-1, 1, 7}}
Comment: I struggled to come up with a solution for 2D grid. He suggested me to calculate for a 1D array and convert the same logic to 2D. I could only explain my logic but not through code. This person was a great motivator, he tried to pull me out to get the code logic. He is a perfect interviewer for anyone I would say.
My thoughts: I was not well prepared but a community like this would really be helpful in anyway. I love these interviews and they want only the best. For that, we have to prepare ourselves strong and best. I believe that there will be no fruitfulness in success, if we dont have failures. I continue my journey here as before always. Love Coding! Cheers!