D.E.Shaw Interview Experience for SWE

I was in 4th Year of my college when the recruiter pinged me on Linkedin if I would be interested in the opportunity. Later, I found that many of my college friends received the mail.

Coding Round

Hackerrank | 120 minutes | 22 Questions- 2 coding Questions (Hard), 20 MCQs from Core CS fundamentals- OS, DBMS, Networks, OOPs, Logical Reasoning.

• 1 Question was a modification of Manachers Algorithm
• Another one was a Double Knapsack Problem (3D DP)

I was able to solve 1 of the problem but all the CS Core questions correctly and received the Interview Call.

Interview Round-1 (Technical)

General Questions like Introduction, Why DE Shaw when you have other offers (I had a PPO from Microsoft)

Questions from my projects, Operating System (deep diving) and Networking (deep diving)

The interview lasted for 40 minutes

2 days later, I had 2nd round

Interview Round-2 (Technical)

I was asked my favorite Board Game, I kind of knew what was going to be his next question, so I said Chess. He asked me to implement Chess and follow all the principles of Object Oriented Design. I designed most of the classes in about 30 minutes. Then asked me to stop and answer a few questions from the code, like showing him where I have used various OOPs techniques like Inheritance, Encapsulation, Function Overloading, and Overriding. Then he asked me about Polymorphism, the Benefits of OOPs, and the difference between various access modifiers. Afterward, he gave me the famous N Queens Problem. Cross questioned about Time and Space Complexity, Backtracking and Recursion. This round lasted around 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Interview Round-3 (Technical)

This was majorly a DSA Round where I was given 2 problems to solve and a Puzzle. The interviewer was more interested in the Optimization, Time Complexity of the solutions.

Puzzle- Water Jug Puzzle

Problems-

• Fenwick Tree– XOR of elements in the range
• Weighted Prefix Search

This round lasted for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I was able to answer all the questions

Interview Round-4 (HR)

Questions on College Life, other offers and compensation, and job location. Job location was Bangalore, and Work From Office completely and 5 days a week. Moreover, the HR told me not to expect it a 9 to 5 job and much great Work-Life Balance like Microsoft.

VERDICT: SELECTED

I didn’t join though because of the HR Warning about Work-Life Balance, Work from Office. In Microsoft, the team where I interned was completely Work From Home and I was going to join the same team in Full Time. Also, there was not much increment depending on the work and hours they were expecting.