Adobe Interview Experience

I was interviewed for Computer Scientist 1 role. I was having experience of 6.5 years in Java Backend Development at the time of the interview.

There were 4 rounds in total.

Round 1: (Data Structure)

This round was primarily focused on Data Structures and problem-solving. They started with a simple question and gradually moved to tough questions.

• Find the next greater element in an array. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/next-greater-element/ 
• Find two elements in a BST such that their sum is equal to k. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-pair-given-sum-bst/ 

They expected me to write fully functional code in Notepad++ (or any other editor of choice) and carefully examined the way of writing code. They had a full focus on time and space complexity. The interviewer expected me to write code with optimal time as space complexity.

They had planned for one more question but since my interview started 15 min late (the interviewer was late), they concluded this round with 2 questions only.

Suggestion: Try to practice medium-level DSA questions from Leetcode, GeeksForGeeks for topics such as List, Queue, Stack, BST, Arrays, Searching, and Sorting.

Round 2: (System Design): The interviewer asked me to create a Read-Write lock that can support multi reads simultaneously but only one write. He asked me to write code in IDE so that I can show a small demo at the end. However my IDE was not ready, I proceeded with Notepad. The interviewer verified if SOLID principles were followed or not, all requirements can be met or not, etc. He asked several queries over the design and also suggested improvements in course of the discussion. In the end, he asked several questions regarding SQL vs NOSQL DB and design principles. He went into depth of design of NoSQL design.

Suggestion: Study as many system design use cases as possible from various articles (Especially articles on Medium)

Round 3: (Hiring Manager): It was purely focused on past projects during my work experience. The interviewer asked in-depth regarding all the projects which I was part of in current and past organizations. He asked about all the challenges I faced, how did I resolve that, what was product design, my roles, and responsibilities. He also asked why I am looking for a job change, what will I do If I found that the culture in my team is not up to the mark, which other companies I am interviewing, etc. I proceed with positive answers to all these questions.

Suggestion: Have a thorough knowledge of every project you worked till now. Tell them each and every fine detail of a major challenging task in each project. Try to have a positive outlook on answers. 

Round 4: (Director Round): This round was with the Director of the Business Unit for which Hiring was ongoing. He asked for a detailed introduction with school education, family background, etc. He then moved to my experience and asked if I have created some projects from scratch, done load testing, my roles, and responsibilities in the current team. He then moved to Netflix design. Asked me to create a High-Level Design of the Netflix-like system. After some cross-questioning regarding the design, he finally concluded the interview process.

Suggestion: Try to be positive in your approach and present a nice picture of yourself.

After a couple of days of the Director round, I received the mail that I have cleared the interview.