Google interview tips
https://satakshigarg.medium.com/after-i-failed-my-google-step-interview-48dabe2446da
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dheerajpatta/
TODO:
https://amazoninterviewwhizzacademy.com/p/customer-obsession-leadership-principle-masterclass
https://in.indeed.com/career-advice/interviewing/how-to-use-the-star-interview-response-technique [Interviewers in general look for those who can use the STAR method, Situation, Task, Action, and Result. The star method is a way of answering behavioral questions in an interview. Briefly explain the situation, task required, the action you took, and what the result of that action was.]
Don't try to change timing
Don't repeat your ask for offer
Kafka, ActiveMQ, RabbitMQ
Scrum work
Architect needs to look after scrums multiple sprints ahead... to identify blockers early
1 hour block per day helps team morale
Tell about project which is most memorable for you
CPX-CIC
Tell me the situation where you influenced the decision
DRM
Architect has to earn respect. Tell how you are doing it
CIC
Tell about yourself in a line
People see me as person with consistent, committed and focussed on qualiity
Tell about challenging project
Ingress controller
Statelessness
Scale
Resiliency
Feature extraction
Streaming processing
Multi-thread
Optimization
CPX
Monolith to microservice
Tell about the biggest challenge you faced
Mention about creating high performing team
Mention about negotiation with management about time-line vs quality
Tell about yourselves
Resist urge to tell your resume line by line
Use Job description to answer this
Technical acumen
Kubernetes, security, ML, Cloud, L2-L7, server/client programming, various language
Problem solver
Servant leadership
Experience with variety of culture
Reason of interest
My expertise on multiple area can be used here
Opportunity to interact with multiple stakeholders
Nice option for problem solving
Pitching
I am 16 years + experience
I am right now doing work of architect with hands-on coding
I am right now involved with Kubernetes scale project and Machine learning project. I am driving these projects. Driving means architecture, design, delivery, coding, leading team technically, stakeholder management.
What is your greatest strength?
Mention relevant and specific mention
Critical analysis capability has been appreciated
Creating meaningful connection. People see me as significant team player
At career start, got a challenging project which was finally come up great. We had own second project based on the win of 1st project. Samsung had booth for this product in the worlds consumer electronics trade show as well
Recently got chance to work on Citrix cloud native project. It had interesting story. This project resulted in a new product known as CIC. However, initially when i was invited, it was not meant to be a product. Its only scope was to help sales engineer create demo setup easily
I got chance to manage team. I used innovative approach in sprint management for which I was appreciated by the Citrix Talent education team
Recently for Log4j, based security crisis, I was instrumental for handling customers interest. I was recognised by Citrix leadership for the same.
What is your greatest weakness?
Memorizing
To handle it, I keep notes
Why should we hire you?
Mention your 3-4 qualifications which applies
Critical analysis capability has been appreciated
Proven record of tech leadership
Proven record of multiple products delivery from scratch
Share a success story
A lot of project from inception. There are lot many uncertainties. I brought project at success defeating these odds
My colleague talks about lot about my committment, team-player, technical excellence
Leaders talk about my professionalism and collaboration skill
Why are you culturing fit?
How are you aligned to company vision?
Why do you want to work here?
Never tell I want
Mention how company need can be achieved with my help
Talk about company vision
Tell how you can help to achieve
Keep eye contact
Tell your personal ambition
Add your career goal
What would your co-workers say about you?
Try to frame answer in context of Job description
Review linkedin recommendation you received and get key points
Critical analysis capability has been appreciated
I keep everyone in team motivated
I am called to easy to go person
I am called as the person who can jump-in and help in any part of project (not for manager)
Why do you want to leave your current role?
Purpose is know if you are trying to go away from something
Speak positively. Never tell anything negative
Eager to find new opportunity and role for my career growth
Based on JD, mention how my current skill can be used for new role
Be specific
What is your salary expectation?
Never give any specific number
Do research on salary range for your current role
LinkedIn salary tool
Tell me time when you were successful on a team
There was time when a previous project failed and team was on low motivation
At that time a challenging project came to manager and he was thinking what to do
He called me and asked my interest. I took it
I did lead by example, which slowly brought confidence on the team.
This project got successful and product was demoed in the worlds greatest consumer electronics trade show
Tell me about a time when you made a mistake
Being from the Indian Stastical Institute, I was asked for explaining elliptic curve cryptography
I eagerly took it
Later audience felt I realised that this concept needs lot of mathematics which they might not be aware of
I set the expectation to all about this and then delivered the lecture
Tell me about the time when you worked with a difficult person
My boss assigned a big project to me. I need to own the team as well as interact with multiple team members
One of the team member proactively start in stand-up as first person and then continue with his technical discussion without keeping in mind the other's turn
This lead the standup to go beyond 15 mins ..
I keep on mentioning various sprint best practices in this meeting without naming him. It includes other best practices as well. Eventually he could do the needful
Tell me about a time when you persuaded someone to change his opinion
I see one person was native speaker and so, don't like to speak
I talked him personally and observed that he is not confident in communication
To handle it, i have causal talks with him which boost-up his sprit and changed his opinion
For PDRM, used C language and with the right design, it worked do it right in first time
Previously, team lead used C since it was most comfortable for them, but project got scrapped due to lot many issue
After seeing this, team lead valued the design advantage
Tell me about a time when you had to handle pressure
Key is to tell story
Describe the Situation
Describe the steps you took
Describe the result
Key mile stone
Use words like "I implemented", "I persuaded"
Go with what customer want instead of what competitor offers
Tell me something about you which is not mentioned in your CV
A person recognized as doing systematic analysis
A person recognized as keeping eye on quality always
A person recognized to execute leadership with balance between empathy and project ask
What you do everyday which you like
Learning data science
In free time, using data to do something
Enhancing communication skill
Why you like to join
Learning opportunity and letting see that it is applied what I do
Areas
Array,
linked list,
string,
binary tree
Hash table
Algorithmatic Questions
Shortest path from a node to another node in weighted graph
Dijkstra's algorithm
Sliding Window Maximum (Maximum of all subarrays of size k)
Given an array of number, create a new array which contains the next higher number in the same index the number has
Asked to my friend in Microsoft interview
Verify if 9*9 matrix is a valid Suduko
Asked to my friend in Microsoft interview
Identify middle node of a linked list and then reverse the first halve
Asked to my friend in Pulse secure interview
Time complexity of building a heap
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/time-complexity-of-building-a-heap/
Count number of BSTs in a given Binary tree
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/count-the-number-of-binary-search-trees-present-in-a-binary-tree/
Total number of possible Binary Search Trees and Binary Trees with n keys
Total number of structurally unique BSTs with n keys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIc0mHgHUww
Given set of coins, find all combinations which can result in a sum N.
Find minimum number of coins that make a given value
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2eoCvk59Rc
Length of the longest substring without repeating characters
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/length-of-the-longest-substring-without-repeating-characters/
Median of two sorted arrays of different size
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/median-of-two-sorted-arrays-of-different-sizes/
Regular expression matching
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dynamic-programming-wildcard-pattern-matching-linear-time-constant-space/
Check if a number is Palindrome
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/check-if-a-number-is-palindrome/
Write the most efficient algorithm to find square/square root of a number.
Write the most efficient algorithm to find if a number is prime or not.
At Bit level, how will you find if a number is a power of 2 or not.
Swap two numbers using XOR
http://placementsindia.blogspot.in/2007/09/google-top-interview-puzzles.html. Answer to few questions are at http://placementsindia.blogspot.in/2007/12/solutions-to-few-google-top-interview.html
Which parameters should be considered while deciding for a suitable sorting algorithm
Size of data(in-memory/file/streaming), expected ordering of values, available memory, purpose of sorting
Given a positive integer N, count all possible distinct binary strings of length N such that there are no consecutive 1’s.
Examples:
Input: N = 2 Output: 3 // The 3 strings are 00, 01, 10 Input: N = 3 Output: 5 // The 5 strings are 000, 001, 010, 100, 101
Given a binary tree, print boundary nodes of the binary tree Anti-Clockwise starting from the root. For example, boundary traversal of the following tree is “20 8 4 10 14 25 22″
Given a binary tree, print it vertically. The following example illustrates vertical order traversal.
1 / \ 2 3 / \ / \ 4 5 6 7 \ \ 8 9 The output of print this tree vertically will be: 4 2 1 5 6 3 8 7 9
Find a missing number in arithmetic progression
Hint : binary search, use sum and subtract
Calculate power of n
Imagine the circular linked list
3 8 9 7 2 1 3 4 6 [3] same as first element .i.e three.
The longest sequence would be 3 8 9 7 2 1 , the other candidate being 3 4 6
Count all possible paths from top left to bottom right of a mXn matrix
Hint - Use recursion and DP
Find first non-repeated number in the unsorted array
Find neighbor of each node in a binary tree. ,
Given an array of stock values of a company. Find out the time when a user would have bought the stock and sold the sock. Basically find the maximum positive difference of any two given elements in an array?
Hint: store minimum, when moving from left to right or store maximum when moving from right to left
Follow up question - Extend the algorithm to n-ary tree.
Two arrays given to you. First array contains number s. Second array contains key values.
We need to find smallest window in first array which covers all second array elements.
e.g:
Input= {6,7,1,3,2,4,5,2,3,1,2,5}
Keys = {2,5,1}
Design a data structure which could perform the following operations in O(1):
- Insert(), Delete(), Search(), getRandom()
getRandom() should pick a "random" element from your data structure, and should not be predictable (for instance always picking the "first" element from your DS
Hint: Hashtable + array
Find an algorithm to find a word ladder between 2 words by changing just one letter at a time. All the words formed should be valid dictionary words.
Eg.
FOOL ->POOL->POLL->POLE->PALE->SALE->SAGE
COLD → CORD → CARD → WARD → WARM
Construct dictionary as graph
Check if a binary tree is subtree of another binary tree
use inorder and preorder traversal
It deals with a knight piece on a chess board. You are given two inputs: starting location and ending location. The goal is to then calculate and print the shortest path that the knight can take to get to the target location.
Hint - Make graph and use Dijistra's algorithm
Detect cycle in a directed graph. Find cycle in undirected graph
Hint: use modified DFS with back edge
Design an engilsh dictionary. Tell about data structures to be used. Provide APIs.
Hint - prefix tree
Why key generation was separate step in IPSEC instead of putting as part of IPSEC
proxy versus firewall
How HMAC works
Describe ssl protocol. When asymetric key is used and when symmetric key is used?
Advantage of asymetric key and symmetric key cryptography
Describe certificate chain validation approach
Describe how web proxy handles ssl traffic. From where, server will get certificate of url which client is accessing?
How malloc can cause buffer overflow
Design an http server from scratch.
Design memory management library similar to malloc/free. In this design, how to handle memory corruption?
Design vi editor and identify components
Hint - find different components
Design a security solution to filter unwanted domain names. For example, admin will create a policy to disallow https traffic to https://www.facebook.com . Can DNS blocking will serve the purpose?
Hint - DNS blocking will not work (/etc/host). Need to see ssl client hello which carries domain name and filter based on this
What are differences between binary semaphore and mutex
In mutex, same thread will unlock. In binary semaphore, one thread will wait and other thread can send signal to unblock thread. So, binary semaphore is suitable for producer -consumer problem.
What is the use of ptrace system call?
Epoll versus select system call
Socket programming steps in server side and client side
Design Multiple reader, one writer while concurrent reads are allowed. However, read-write together is not allowed
What is "Copy on write" in linux?
How the signal handling works in linux? Is it using interrupts? If not, what actually is used?
After fork(), if we print a global variable address, will the output will be same for parent and child processes? Give the reason.
Explain what happens when you type google.com in a web browser. Include http, TCP, IP, ethernet packet processing as well.
Programming
What are various storage classifiers and quantifiers in C.
What is call by value, call by reference in C language.
Is it possible to create shared library which defines C++ container class?
No. Function signature depends on T type. For example, T type can be int, char as per usage. So, it is not possible to define it in shared library.
How to make generic sorting c function which accepts any datatype.
How to modify C++ object such that it calls different function then actual virtual function.
Boost thread library.
Is it possible to inherit C++ STL container classes?
Write a program for mobile phonebook in C++. Provide functionality to search by name and by phone number. A person should be allowed to store multiple numbers. Which boost/STL library will help in this?
Write a macro to get offset of an structure
Hint - https://www.careercup.com/question?id=58178
Create a template C++ linked list class which can handle data types including user defined class. What methods user defined classes should take care of
Hint : assignment operator, comparison operator, destructor.
When evaluating different RTOS, what matrices should be considered?
Difference between VxWorks and Linux
What is a semaphore? Explain in detail.
What is an interrupt. How does a processor handle an interrupt?
What is the exact role of Memory Management Unit?
Different between mutex and semaphore
Difference between fork and exec
You are Intel’s representative for India and you are about to board a flight to US for a very very important billion dollar deal. But at the airport you are asked for a bribe of Rs500/- . Will you give the bribe or not?
Why you want change?
You have estimated project delivery as 2 years, however later you see that it has gone to 3 years. What you will do?
http://geeksquiz.com/category/articles/puzzle/
https://github.com/zhiqiangzhongddu/Data-Science-Interview-Questions-and-Answers-General-
Vanishing gradient problem, exploding gradient problem (interview question)
https://towardsdatascience.com/six-ways-to-get-more-exposure-as-an-aspiring-data-scientist-46a9e95c90ac
https://ineuron.ai/ -> Machine learning courses
https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS229 -> Andrew NG course[done]
https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS229/47 -> Andrew NG
https://nptel.ac.in/courses/106/106/106106046/ -> ISI Murthy sir course [done]
https://nptel.ac.in/courses/106/106/106106224/ -> Computer vision
https://nptel.ac.in/courses/106/101/110101145/
https://nptel.ac.in/courses/106/106/106106226/ -> AI searching algorithm
https://nptel.ac.in/courses/106/105/106105032/ -> Image processing
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/deep-learning?utm_source=deeplearningai&utm_medium=institutions&utm_campaign=WebsiteCoursesDLSTopButton -> Andrew Ng 5 courses paid (recommended by Abhinav)
https://www.amazon.in/Hands-Machine-Learning-Scikit-Learn-TensorFlow/dp/1491962291 -> Machine learning book [under progress]
ML coding basic needs
https://mlblr.com/includes/python/index.html#who-is-this-guide-for
(Ref: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bhuvnesh-sharma94_91-data-science-interview-questions-activity-6769119388642676736-XcQf)
➤ Best Data Science E-Books
➤ Best Data Science Resources
➤ Best Machine Learning Resources
➤ Best SQL Resources
➤ Best Python Resources
➤ Best Data Science Books
Machine Learning Algorithms Explained
Link: https://lnkd.in/ej3k2G4
Kubernetes questions
How container is implemented in Linux?
Reference
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/microsoft-msit-interview-experience-set-85-campus/
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/boundary-traversal-of-binary-tree/
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/print-binary-tree-vertical-order-set-2/
http://www.careercup.com/page?pid=amazon-interview-questions
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/count-possible-paths-top-left-bottom-right-nxm-matrix/
http://www.careercup.com/question?id=5668779289739264
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/check-if-a-binary-tree-is-subtree-of-another-binary-tree/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2339101/knights-shortest-path-chess-question
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/detect-cycle-in-a-graph/
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/detect-cycle-undirected-graph/
https://hackernoon.com/50-data-structure-and-algorithms-interview-questions-for-programmers-b4b1ac61f5b0
Personal experience