[Interview] Company A
Company A
I deleted the confidential information unallowed to share in a post. Please let me know if you have questions.
My background
Based on my resume, interviewers asked some questions about me like the motivation changing the career, the strengths and weaknesses comparing to other majors, and how I have studied computer science (in school or somewhere else). I didn’t figure out why they were curious about that so much but looking back, I think they wanted to find what I would do better than normal developers and to hear the answers from me. Afraid that I didn’t make an appealing story for them. I should have talked to them in the perspective of developers.
Technical Interview
Math was not that hard nor tricky but I was so nervous that I couldn’t think rationally. Since I was stuck with the first question, maybe they gave me the easier question I didn’t solve as well. It was to find how many games N players would have in a tornament. What was important in this problem was to get the level of a binary tree, which I already knew but failed to find the answer. I almost got close to the solution for the next two problems. One is to tell the right data structure in a code snippet where the anwer was QUEUE, and the other is to find the optimal routine to run three laundries.
“The key idea is to reduce the waiting time between two laundries so A-C-B is the answer” I said. One of the interviewers then asked me whether my answer can be different, given that the laundries should come to put in the washer and dryer several times in a day. I thought it should be but didn’t tell how it would. And then the technical interview was over.
CS
I was totally dumb since the entire questions were about Database, which I gave up to study OS and Network. I guess the reason was because I wrote down database only in the regards of CS background. Maybe it was kind of generousity for a non-major in their perspective. The interview started off, giving me a situation where an amount of money was transferred from an account to the other, and wanted me to tell what the atomic transaction was and what problems might happen in this situation. I said that if the transaction got halted by an error, money would not be withdrawn or not be trasferred in the other account successfully. And then, an interviewer began to ask deeper and deeper, mainly about transaction syncronization (what it is, how to solve, its limitations). Of course, I couldn’t speak even one word but had to say ‘I will learn more about that, working for the company’ So sad…
Review
Looking back the days and nights I’ve spent to prepare for this interview, It was the opportunity for me to study the CS knowledge in a short time. It was so hard for me but thankfully I have learned so many things from the study group. Still, I feel I’m 30% off from the majors. Things I should keep and fix for a next time:
Good
- Did not give up and remained depressed because of my low-quality resume.
- Studied hard and asked the members what I didn’t know.
Bad
- Didn’t check the mail in time so that the preparation got shorter.
- Failed to control my mind for a bit.
