Akamai Interview Experience for SDE Summer Internship

Round 1: Online hacker rank test. Got 3 questions (1 SQL + 2 arrays question). Don’t remember the questions though, but they were easy. Got through that round and got a call for getting selected for further rounds. Although I didn’t answer the call. Was informed by the college that there would be 3 rounds further (technical, managerial, and HR round).

Round 2:  Logging on, there were coding questions of strings (related to anagrams). After introducing myself, then went to the question, showed my thought process, and started coding. All test cases passed on 1st try. The question was something like this: “Given an array of strings, return an array consisting of only unique anagrams. “

Then, we went through the code doing a dry run for one example. The interviewer asked me for some optimizations, and my answer was that I could reduce from O(nlogn) to O(n) by using a hashmap. Just discussion, and no implementation. My explanation was good, and then we went to a whiteboard, where there were 3 questions (all 3 from networking)

1. Something related to TCP 3-way handshake
2. Which system call is responsible for sending SYN packet in TCP (Answer is connect())
3. Something related to various classes of IP addresses (class A to E, and their ranges)

Was able to answer questions 1 & 2, and to further test my understanding, Interviewer asked me to explain further. It went from TCP to all 7 layers of the OSI model. Then she asked me the difference between a router, switch, and hub. I couldn’t say about the switch, while Hub and Router were clearly differentiated by me. Then some OS questions, like some Linux commands to perform some actions (like to view process state(ps command), and some more (couldn’t answer them all) and told her I usually work in windows, so I’m not very familiar with such)

She asked about one of my projects from my resume, and it was related to databases and REST API, so she asked about HTTP methods, error codes, and which protocol it uses (TCP or UDP, and is TCP). and then, diff between TCP and UDP, some examples which use them, and such.

Some OS questions like CPU scheduling, which data structure can be used, and many more.

After this, she was done and asked if I had any questions. I asked about her experience in Akamai. This concluded round 1.

Round 3: This interviewer asked for two puzzles at the start. One was a (3 switches and one light bulb puzzle). I knew it but acted as I didn’t and said the answer.

I thought I was acting smart, but damn, the interviewer was smarter, (I couldn’t figure out this, but it was very similar to the 1st puzzle, so he was testing me to see whether I was knowing the 1st puzzle or not).

He told us we can skip this puzzle and come back at a later time. Then he moved on to one more coding question (Boundary traversal of a binary tree). I knew how to do it, but wasn’t confident to implement it. Fortunately, he just asked the algorithm and said to write it down in a notepad. I said it, and he asked what data structure can be used. I said queue, to which he said, can u use any other? I said, even stack can be used by recursion. He was satisfied. Then we moved on to my resume, he took one of my projects which I had already discussed in the 1st round. Same repetition, TCP, UDP, difference, which applications, HTTP methods, and related stuff.

Then OOP questions, polymorphism (and its types – static and run-time), inheritance and its types, and similar types.

Then some Linux commands (ps, netstat, server-side commands, given functionality to be accomplished, which command to be used, like one, was, given service on a server running, find out which port it is running on)

Then, from OS, what will a process look like in the memory? (answered it something like, it will have a heap and stack and continued from there)

Then, describe the series of events that happen when you turn ON your PC (like what happens with OS, where is it loaded (I answered whatever I knew and said, I just knew the abstract level). Then he concluded. I asked him abt his experience in Akamai.

Round 4: At this point, I had 2 tech rounds and I expected one more 4th round (which was HR)

The interviewer gave me a question in the chat (cisco webex). The question was related to arrays, simple question:

Given array [-6,-5,-4,-2,0,1,2,3,5]
Output it as ranges like
-6 to -4, -2, 0 to 3, 5

He told me to share and code it in an IDE/editor. I was nervous about implementation, so I opened a notepad to write down the algorithm (since the previous interviewer asked me to do it on a notepad). But I somehow ended up writing the code entirely on a notepad. the code was messy, and at each point of implementation, he was like, why this, why that, … After I was done writing, he pointed out one mistake, I was not taking care of repeating numbers, which I then coded successfully. Then I took a sample input and dry ran the code. And he said ok, and to share the code in the chat. Then, again, questions relating to networking (mostly), and a bit of OS. networking included TCP, UDP, the difference between them (same as in the above rounds), and also, HTTPS life cycle (about SSL), HTTP requests, server-side commands, and more as such. About 50% of these I could answer. Remaining, I was like, my environment is windows, so I am not familiar, and he was totally ok with that. after that, he was done, and I asked him, what technologies do they work with, and he answered. And finally, he was like “all right, good luck!!”

By the tone of that sentence, I was able to figure out something went wrong. Maybe it was my coding in a notepad, maybe something else he didn’t like. I waited for the entire day, waiting for the HR round, but I was given negative feedback. Although I wasn’t selected, it was my very first interview experience, and was happy to get through 3 rounds.