Real Interviews

See also: Real Exams

Source

For 2024

Ubuntu

• Many Linux Foundation Knowledges

For 2023

Apple

• Many CS fundamental questions (e.g., what is a Hash Table (pros/cons)?)
• isPalindrome with a few edge cases

Palantir

• technical design of a class registration system (higher level engineering)
• technical design of a package manager proxy server (multithreading)

Grammarly

• 1 Q on removing adjacent duplicates
  • simple $O(n^2)$ algorithm
  • improved to $O(n)$ algorithm using stack
  • can improve space complexity from now on but cannot improve time complexity.
• 1 Followup Q on removing length adjacent duplicates arbitrarily
  • $O(nk)$ algorithm
  • Had even more time left, so I discussed with the interviewer and improved to $O(n)$ algorithm 😃
• Learned that Grammarly has internal projects, Readerly (summarizing) and Speakerly (Generative Intelligence)

Palantir with Karat

• 3 basic questions (analyzing algorithms and complexities)
• 3 Leetcode Easy to Medium Problem
  • Question involved constructing trees and traversing them
  • Each question is built on top of previous queries, getting gradually harder.
  • However, the most challenging question was still Leetcode Medium level.

Duolingo with Karat

• 3 basic questions (analyzing algorithms and complexities)
• 1 Leetcode Hard level question
  • Involved in Game State Change, Constructing Adjacency List of Game States, and Pathfinding
  • Given a Game Board, find a list of moves from the start state to the end state

Databricks

• 2 1-hour interview
  • 1 conceptual, technical design (data pipelines & tradeoffs)
  • 1 conditional BFS problem