Status: New grad, MS CS Top 50 CS school
Position: SDE-1 on TripAdvisor
Location: Needham, Massachusetts
Date: Mid-January, 2020.
Interview Process:
Phone Interview: Duration: (About 1 hour)
- A simple question about tree traversal (very easy). A few OOP questions, some web-related queries, and some DB queries. Because I was able to complete the coding portion in a short period of time, the interview ended up having more questions about OOP concepts and web-related technologies that I had previously worked on.
Take-home Test:
- The take-home test is fairly simple, but the emphasis is on the design rather than the actual implementation. I’ll say it again: focus on the design rather than the implementation because it shows how good you are at designing solutions.
On-site: Three interviews were conducted (2 Codings and 1 Behavioral of 1 hour each all on whiteboard).
Round 1(Behavioral): Was fairly straightforward, with discussion centered on what I’ve done thus far, my interests outside of work, and what the engineer did on the team, as well as the company’s career progression.
Round 2(Coding Interview): In my opinion, the questions are fairly straightforward, and I was able to solve them fairly quickly, but I’m not sure what the engineers are looking for. I was able to solve the problem and come up with an optimal solution, but they were dissatisfied.
I had two questions in total, the first of which took me 15 minutes to answer after the initial discussion about the work the team does, etc. The second question, on the other hand, I was able to answer right away because it involved mathematics rather than logical reasoning.
- A graph is given we have to find all the components which are connected. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/connected-components-in-an-undirected-graph/amp/
- In the array we need to find pair of three element which has sum to a target value. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-a-triplet-that-sum-to-a-given-value/amp/
Round 3(System Design): The interviewer had prepared a problem based on something that TripAdvisor engineers worked on and wanted to know how I could solve the problem at scale. This also required coding. The discussion went well because I was able to come up with better approaches through discussion and, while I occasionally needed hints, I was able to come up with a reasonable solution. The interview is quite open-ended and can go in any direction depending on how you approach the problem.
Culture:
- The office is simply incredible! One of the best I’ve seen so far among the many on-sites I’ve attended.
- The people at the office are extremely friendly, and it is also a pet-friendly office. You can almost sit anywhere for lunch and talk to anyone, which I believe is the most important aspect of a company.
- Every day, they provide a free lunch with a variety of options. They did not require me to stay in a hotel because I was a local.
Takeaway:
- To be honest, my takeaway was mediocre. I thought I nailed the interview, but when I asked for feedback from the recruiter, she said I got stuck while solving a problem, which I guess happens to most of us, and the key part of any interview, I believe, should be problem-solving skills rather than judging a person if he/she is able to propose the best solution the first time.
- I still believe it is a great company to work for, with some really interesting problems and engineering challenges, but I believe the interview process could be improved.