Disney+ Hotstar Interview Experience for SDE-1 2022

I applied for the off-campus drive of Disney+ Hotstar in July 2022 (without referral). After a week I got the Hackerrank Test link for Round 1 OA.

Round 1: Online Assessment: The test was of 60 minutes in duration and included 2 coding questions and 20 MCQs – which were based on concepts like Data Structures, Operating Systems, and Database Systems. The two coding questions were:

• https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-value-to-get-positive-step-by-step-sum
• Variation of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43224443/broken-calculator

I got a google form over mail from Hotstar HR to fill in the details for further rounds. After a few days, I got a call from HR to schedule the interview. All 3 games were held on the same day.

Round 2: DSA Round 1: This round started with my and the interviewer’s introduction to each other. The interviewer first asked me about my current job projects and internship experience. Then he jumped onto the coding question.

Question – https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/minimum-cost-to-merge-all-elements-of-list/

I started from the brute force approach and took some hints to move on to the efficient solution. The interviewer also asked some basic questions about the Data Structures concepts as I was solving the problem. For e.g. How does a vector work in C++? How is its property of flexible capacity implemented? The round lasted about 40 minutes.

Round 3: DSA Round 2: This round again began with an introduction, we had a conversation about the technologies used at Hotstar and what other alternatives are available in the market. Then we moved on to the technologies I had experience working with and asked how comfortable I was in every programming language I listed in my resume. After 15-20 minutes of the interview, he came onto the coding question.

Question – https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/the-stock-span-problem/

Again in this round, I first started with the brute force solution and slowly moved on to the efficient solution. We discussed 3 different approaches, O(n^2) solution, O(n) solution with O(n) space, and then lastly O(n) solution with constant space. The round lasted about 50 minutes.

Round 4: Engineering Manager Round: This round comprised mainly of a technical discussion on my projects. We talked about the High as well as Low-Level Design of the projects, along with the technologies used and challenges faced during their implementation. As I had worked on multiple Django projects, the interviewer asked about the structure of a Django application and how it is deployed over a server. He also asked what DNS servers are and how they work, to which I gave an answer in layman’s language. This round also lasted about 50 minutes.

At the end of every interview round, the interviewers asked me if I had any questions for them. So make sure to have a few questions to ask about the work and tech used at Hotstar.

Final Result: Rejected
Tough luck but all in all, a good and learning interview experience.