Morgan Stanley Interview | Set 17 (On-Campus)

Round 1: 1.5 hours
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This was a preliminary round held on Hackerrank. It included 20 MCQs for 50 marks
and 2 coding question for 75 marks each. We had 1.5 hours to solve all the questions.
The questions in this round were from a range of subjects – Data Structures, Computer Networks, OS and a few Quantitative Aptitude questions. Some of them were related to finding no of articulation points, scheduler vs dispatcher, class A,B… IP addresses, linkage, Interrupt handler, union compatible tables etc
These are the coding questions:
1)There is network of servers which are connected by bidirectional cables.
And we have to find the shortest path between two servers.

Input format:
First line: N (number of servers) E (number of cables) L (Latency of each cable, all
cables are of same latency)
E lines each contain: S (source server) D (destination server) [there is a cable
between server S to server D]
E+1 line: K (Number of test cases)
K lines each contain: S(source server) D(destination server)

Output format:

For each of the k test cases find the shortest path between s and D.

Constraints :
1<=N<=1000
1<=L<=400
1<=k<=109

2) Given that the numbers can only contain digits 0,1,2,3,4,5 find Nth such number.

Example input : 6
Output : 10

After this round 25 people were shortlisted for Technical Round 1

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Technical Round 1: (Round 1) (45-60 mins)
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The interviewer was pretty convivial. He started off with asking me about myself and then technical questions followed.
Q.1 What are the technologies you have explored? What kind of problems you have solved with them? (since I mentioned I like exploring new stuff)
Q.2 He skimmed through my resume and noticed that I had mentioned many languages but not C++ & he inadvertently asked me "what are vtables". I had absolutely no idea and he said it was a very obvious thing for a CS guy to know, for a CS guy. Later I realized vtables are used in c++ & the guy was probably shake up my confidence :/
Q.3 Find a missing element in a sorted array of numbers from 1...N ( I have no idea why did he asked this :p)
Q.4 REST vs SOAP (as I had good web dev experience)
Q.4 Some basic OOPs concept and how they are actually implemented in Java ie how JVM does things at runtime (how runtime polymorphism actually works). I told him that I have never read Language Specifications but also told him how I'd do it if I were to implement it. He seemed quite satisfied.
Q.5 You're given a dictionary of words, ex {'My','name','is','XYZ'} and also a sentence like XYZisMyname. You have to find whether this sentenance is only made up of words from the dictionary. I explained him a TRIE based approach, he pointed some pitfalls and I later improved it.
Q.6 This was a tough one as it had appeared in Fourth Round of many candidates' experience that I read on GfG. There is a big warehouse and there are many forklifts used to carry around things from place to place. Now you're to design a COMPLETE system to manage them such that forklifts never collide and they always find
optimal paths for their destination. You have to design the algorithms, data structures(to keep track of coordinates, positions etc), classes etc. I put forth
many approaches but he wasn't satisfied with anyone of them and kept on guiding me to finally arrive on a decent enough solution.
Q.7 Why Morgan Stanley? I gave him a staid and banal answer to which he facetiously replied that it wasn't at all honest :p

For a first round,it was pretty tough one as I didn't get few questions but I think it was my approach and strong grasp on basics that made the difference.

After this 8 people were selected for the next round.

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Group Activity: (Round 2) (30-45 mins)
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We were divided in to two groups and were handed out a chart paper, lego blocks, clay. We were given 30 mins and had to come up with a startup idea and its key features,
business model, logo, name, funding plan etc. Then midway through the round we were asked to abandon our idea and pick a new one. So it was a pretty grilling and intensive round and at times it felt like roadies interview but it was absolute fun!

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Technical Round 2: (Round 3) (60-80 mins)
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I shall say this was my best and worst round. Almost every interviewer had a speciality and this one had OS. He asked me to introduce myslef and then asked me what
my favorite subject is. I mentioned "OS and DS" and this put a big smile on his face :/
Q.1 What is paging, page table, virtual memory, why it is needed, what can be the maximum size of page table and the virtual address space.
Q.2 What are other things in OS that I like, I told him IPC, Threads etc and the next question followed.
Q.3 This was a fantastic question and the way he built it - layer by layer was amazing! He asked me about browsers(which one you use and why?) and the difference between them. Obviously he
was looking for an answer from OS perspective. So I told him how mozilla is very fast and how pathetic chrome becomes after opening few tabs. Then he asked me about
the reasons. After getting a little guidance, I told him how mozilla uses threads and chrome uses processes for every new tab that you open and then he asked me
how chrome shares cookies across tabs and thats when questions on IPC followed. I was then asked about synchronization etc.
Q.4 Design a "playlist" feature (with all the classes and data structures) and how I would implement it and which Data Structures I'd use.
     He asked me to implement a "Shuffle" feature also, where every "next song" is played randomly and you can also travel back and forth in the list(previous and next)
     Precisely you should be able to -
     (1) create a playlist
     (2) add a song
     (3) delete a song
     (4) shuffle
     (5) play previous or next song
Q.5 You have to design a football game where in teams, players etc will be the classes and he asked me to list down all the entities involved and mention there
attributes. I told him how I'll create various classes and defined inheritance among them (like player->mid,def,attacker etc). Just when it seemed easy, he told me
how I'd design algorithm to pass the ball, score goal etc. So I told him how I'll rate players based on their roles and how there skills will decide their movements,
passes, shots. How we can create a graph to find paths between players to ultimately reach the goal and how opponents can be given high weights on the edges to favor a long pass
instead of short one with many opponents, how their ability will determine the feasibility of doing something. The entire thing was fun and I wish we had more time
to discuss 🙂

I'd say I answered only 80% of the questions but I showed him that I was very well verse with concepts. Be confident, its not necessary to answer all the questions
but very important to think & iteratively improve your approach.

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Professional Fitness Round/Tech+HR: (Round 4) (45-60 mins)
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This was a mix of HR and tech. I was basically asked the same old question "Why Morgan?", but this time I gave him a very genuine answer and questions followed:
Q.1 Why Morgan?
Q.2 One instance where you helped people? (since I had mentioned it)
Q.3 Family, background etc
Q.4 What is AJAX and how would you use it with NodeJS (Since I had worked on NodeJS in my previous intern).
Q.5 Implement a system where in you have to display stock prices in real time. I told him how I'd design my front end and backend. I mentioned two approaches-a long polling
method and another using sockets. I told him how I'd maintain different versions of the stock table and how the second approach will be benefecial. This is where my
intern helped as I had to build scalable backend to maintain millions of open connections and use session-reuse etc. I gave him a rough architecture and explained
its working and he seemed quite impressed.
Q.6 What are my plans for higher studies?
Q.7 X = abcd, Y = a*b*c*d ( has to be 4 digit no)
Find a,b,c,d such that X+Y is minimum.
I fumbled a lot as I was very tired but he guided me very generously 🙂

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HR Round: (Round 5) (15-20 mins)
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Q.1 Why Morgan? Why only Morgan and why not X,Y,Z?
Q.2 What do you dont like? How you deal with it?
Q.3 Do you plan to do MS?
Q.4 Any questions? - Yes, definitely :p

TIPS:
1. Morgan Stanley interviews are way different than others. Not only you have to be a good coder, but you also need good communication skills, body language and confidence.
2. OS, CN, DBMS and DS are very very important! To make it through this grueling 5 Round process, you need to have good understanding of them.
3. Talk about your projects as much as you can, time spent on talking about projects saves you from some questions which you may not like!
4. Be loud and clear about your favorite subjects. Its highly probable you'll be asked questions on them.
5. Ask for help whenever you're stuck on something.These folks are very friendly and they'll happily guide you till CERTAIN POINT.
6. As you can see, a lots of problems involved picking up right data structures, algos to solve real life problems. It only comes with practice and experience 😉
6. Keep coding and do MCQs from Gfg 🙂

All Practice Problems for Morgan Stanley !