D E Shaw Interview Experience | Set 12 (On-Campus)

D.E Shaw & Arcesium (A post trade technical platform)

• 1^st Round (all question for 1 mark each and .25 negative )
  section 1 20 Maths aptitude ( Hard ones time limit 20 mins)
  section 2 20 Programming aptitude (average, time limit 20 mins) ( C , C++ , Java )
  section 3 One Coding Question. (time limit 20 mins )
  It was a simple question. We have given an array containing the location of n magnets placed in a horizontal line. we needed to locate points where net megnetic field strength is zero.
  
  

  They shortlisted 14 people out of about 125

• Round 1 HR
  1. Tell me about yourself Hrishikesh.
  2. How was the written test?
  3. Have you attended any interview previously? why did they reject you?
  4. Do you guess the answer? why?
  5. What is your greatest achievement?
  6. What do you like the most?
  7. What is arcesium?
  8. What do you like about the company?
  9. What are your interests?
• Round 2 ( Technical-I )
  There were 2 interviewers, and it had a time limit of 45 mins but they did interviewing me for more than 2 hours. Questions were from all subjects of computer science.
  
  
  1. They discussed the coding question I had in a written test. They asked me to suggest a better approach. I suggested one, They asked me to use binary search, then I said it wont improve the efficiency.
  2. We have given a link-list containing the loop. Find the head of the loop (I said I know it).
  3. Detailed discussion on poly-way merge sort. How it improves running time for large files.
  4. Find an exact sum of all the elements in an array in less than O(n). I suggested the multithreading approach. (They asked me to write code) .
  5. Extension to the above question does it using multiple processes. What are the differences in threads and process?
  6. What is a hash map? What is the difference between the hash map and map? how does STL in c++ implements both?
  7. Detailed discussion on all the steps of compiler till the execution of a program.
  8. How will you get the output of lexical analyser in gcc?
  9. What is lex and yacc? How Yacc has been implemented?
  10. Difference between LL parsing and LR parsing.
  11. What is linking, loading and binding?
  12. What is selection and projection in DBMS?
  13. Implement selection and projection operation for a file (record wise formated) using just one unix command. ( I said cat filename | grep “/'[^’]+’|[^,]+/” | less )for specified file format. (They liked my approach and got Impressed by this)
  14. How does pipe( | ) works that you used in the last answer? How will u implement it in unix?
  15. Design your own command shell in unix. That should work for all commands in the system.
  16. Implement Google spell-corrector. What data structure will you use and how will it work?

  (I suggested the first trie but later on made it more efficient by using suffix array data structure. They asked me to implement all operation of suffix array).(They liked my approach).

  Outof 14 candidates 4 got selected for the next round. I was lucky enough to be 1 among them 🙂

• Round 3 (Technical II)
  1. Find the distance between two nodes in a bst.
  2. Do the problem for a binary tree.
  3. What is view in DBMS? How does it help in security. Can we allow a user to have access of a particular tupple instead of the column? How?
  4. What are Hubs, Router, and switch? Differences.
  5. How does the transport layer implements TCP connection?
  6. why is the checksum field is redundant in all the network layer headers?
  7. How many class A type of IP addresses are possible?
  8. Describe What happen when you type a URL in the address bar of a browser until you get back your requested page.
  9. What is trigger? How does it work?
  10. Can we make multiple databases in Oracle? Why?
  11. Write SQL query for finding a buyer detail that has made maximum expense including all the transaction between given dates(there were 3 relations Buyers, Transactions and Items)?
  12. Generalize the above query for finding 2^nd ,3^rd and r^th of the buyer. (I used advances sql features).
  13. How does c++ implement virtual functions?
  14. What are 4 features of an OOP design? Describe all of them .( inheritance, incapsulation, polymorphism and abstraction).
  15. Can a virus corrupt a Linux machine? What is a virus? Design a virus.
  16. Design a virus that can corrupt a network.

      Below question are resume project specific

  17. Why didn’t you get selected for GSOC 2014? What the project and organization were all about.
  18. How does your filesystem driver work?
  19. How does Linux provide OOP features in C language.
  20. What problems did u face in compiling Linux kernel and gcc. (cross compilation of gcc). How did you overcome them?
  21. How did u implement Read/write/open file operation without using system calls.

  Although I have forgotten few questions, I’ve tried my best to recall them and include them here.

• Round 4 HR
  1. What do u like to do apart from coding?
  2. Have you ever worked in a team?
  3. Do you study alone or in a group?
  4. What is your first step if you have got stuck somewhere?
  5. Do you ask your friend for help?
  6. Do you like to help your friend in study?
  7. Will you like to share problems you facing in your project with your manager?
  8. What if everything u doing and appreciation for that goes to your teammate?

This site helped me a ton and I hope this article will be helpful for others !
All the Best
Thanks geeks

All Practice Problems for D-E-Shaw !