Phonepe Interview Experience for SDE-2

Giving back to the community!!

Background: SDE1 at FAANGM

Experience: 1.5-2 yrs

Applied to SDE position for 1-3yrs experience at PhonePe in mid Jan’24 through referral, recruiter reached out within a week and interview rounds were scheduled.

Round 1- Machine Coding

It involved solving a LLD problem given 2hrs before the time for submission, post which their was a discussion over the submitted solution with a Senior SDE, discussing tradeoff b/w different scenarios and approach for solution.

This round went pretty well, it lasted for 1 hr.

Round 2- PS/DS

This round was taken by a senior SDE, 2 questions were asked and 1 puzzle

1.) Chocolate distribution problem ( Greedy):

Given an array arr[] consisting of N positive integers representing the ratings of N children, the task is to find the minimum number of candies required for distributing to N children such that every child gets at least one candy and the children having the higher rating get more candies than its neighbours.

Examples:

Input: arr[] = {1, 0, 2}

Output: 5

Explanation:

Consider the distribution of candies as {2, 1, 2} that satisfy the given conditions. Therefore, the sum of candies is 2 + 1 + 2 = 5, which is the minimum required candies.

I was able to solve this problem in optimal TC.

2. There are a total of numCourses courses you have to take, labeled from 0 to numCourses – 1. You are given an array prerequisites where prerequisites[i] = [ai, bi] indicates that you must take course bi first if you want to take course ai

Here the interviewer wanted a solution better than BFS, I wasn’t able to optimise it further from BFS.

3. Puzzle:

Given a function rand6() that returns random numbers from 1 to 6 with equal probability, implement one-liner function rand12() using rand6() that returns random numbers from 1 to 12 with equal probability.

This puzzle is explained in GFG, I provided few solutions but there was issue with equal probability and interviewer was looking for the exact solution

This round went okayish.

Round 3- HM

This round was taken by Senior Engeering Manager, the discussion revolved around standard behavioral questions along with some technical questions on my past experience. Few questions were:

Why are you looking for a switch?

Tell about a recent project?

What datastore is used in your team, sql vs nosql?

How do you keep yourself up-to-date with new technologies?

Verdict: Rejected, majorly due to my low confidence in HM round and okayish DSA round.