Camelot — Placement Saga
Hey guys,I am Pavanesh, Computer Science enthusiast always in the awe of wonders of 0’s and 1’s could create,passionate about open source and software development. I will be doing an intern at Uber in August,2021.After reading this ,if you have any queries,feel free to ping me on Instagram.
Preparation
In my 2nd semester,as I started learning Algorithms,I started developing an interest in it and hence started-off with Competitive Programming from 2nd semester itself. I started solving questions on SPOJ and LeetCode. After a while,I started doing questions on Codeforces(CF) and Codechef. I kept doing problems occasionally on CF during 4th sem also.
I decided not to do any internship after Feb,2021 because I did not think I would be able to keep up with internship and preparation of interviews simultaneously.In the lock-down period,I decided to do CF Div 2 D problems from a2oj. I did that to increase my ability to handle tough questions.
In the month of Aug,2020 as I got in touch with my senior folks,I realized that the type of questions asked in interviews were quite different when compared to what I had been doing(although they do help you in Coding rounds).So,then I started doing questions on GeeksforGeeks and Interviewbit. Since,I already had enough grasp on topics like DP,greedy,graphs,etc., I started focusing more on topics like stacks,queues,two-pointer method,BST,Linked-List,etc., you can found all the good questions easily on GFG and IB. Since I had a habit of solving Div2 D problems I found the questions on GFG and IB much easier to tackle,and hence doing CF did turn out to be useful.
I also started studying OOPs concepts in C++ from learncpp(a really helpful and easy place to learn them all). I had nothing to do and I was literally sitting idle at home watching IPL and sleeping at beginning days of quarantine. I started with long challenges of CodeChef and did May, June and July Long Challenges wholeheartedly
“Programming isn’t about what you know; it’s about what you can figure out.”— Chris Pine
Coding Rounds
Coding rounds for the companies start around a week after the first company opens their registrations. I sat for the coding rounds of all the Day-1 Companies like Uber, Intuit,Nutanix, Amazon,Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Tower Research, DeShaw, Quadeye, Gartner, Springerlink & Service-now. I was pretty(over) confident that I’d get shortlisted in most if not all of them.But,I couldn’t have been more wrong ;in many of the coding rounds,I messed up in one way or another,like not considering enough test-cases or not having enough speed from the start ,or something else. As things turned out,I was shortlisted for only 5 Companies : Microsoft,Uber,Goldman Sachs,Amazon and Service-now(I gave the priority for interviews in that order).
The reason I could find out for not being able to perform well in these coding rounds was a lack of practice of problem-solving in limited time and in fact a lack of practice in general because now that I recall solving the questions on Interviewbit, I realize that I used to skip through a lot of questions because I thought they were easy and mostly because I was lazy and hence I did not have enough practice of topics like linked list, BST, etc.So, I would recommend having as much practice as you can have of questions of Interviewbit(actually implement the solutions and don’t just skip through them after thinking of the logic).
Uber — Open to All — No CGPA Cut-off
Uber is known to have the toughest tests and to add to my woes, I had not slept for the past 3–4 days because of my mlh fellowship Presentations which ended just hours before the test. This is just another one of those examples that stresses the fact that the kickass placements should be attributed only to the students’ self-sustained hard work.In coding round,there were three questions out of which, I was able to solve two in the given time. The first question was a shortest-path problem which very few people could do, and of those who could, most did not find enough time to solve other questions and hence did not get shortlisted. I figured out that the first question was tricky quite early, so I didn’t waste any more of my time on it which gave me an upper edge on a lot of other students. So, it is really important to know what questions will take time and plan out accordingly. The second question was a topological sort problem and the third one was a simple math based ad-hoc problem but it required taking care of a lot of corner cases.
Microsoft(1.5 hr) — Open to All — 7+ CGPA
Mettl.com, Platform was not good and my test automatically restarted 3 times during the test but fortunately, the codes I submitted were automatically saved but yes that cost around 20 minutes as the clock kept running whenever my test restarted. There was a pool of questions from which everyone got 3 random problems to solve. All the three problems I got were pretty easy and implementation based. They required not more than 20–25 lines of code each.As far as I know they were repeated and pretty straight-forward.
Coding Round Logistics
Most of the coding rounds scheduled late in the evenings,So I would spend my afternoons before each coding round practicing rigorously and going through any questions of that particular company.This would get my think tank oiled and well set for the exams.
The scheduling of the coding round may even be such that you are just in the morning.It is best to keep reminders and notifications on Google Calendar,lest you might fall in a soup as I did.
Most of my friends use external keyboards for coding,I too end up getting very clumsy .The best I could do was purchase a wireless mouse and keyboard beforehand so as to minimize the clumsiness.
We were allowed to have rough paper,but it had to be blank white paper without any print or prior rough work.
Interview Rounds
I put Uber first in my priority order not just because I wanted to get into it but also because I had heard that the interviews of Uber are generally too tough, so I thought my chances of getting into it are really thin and hence what I wanted from Uber was a good experience so that I could use it for Microsoft and Google. But I couldn’t have been more wrong; not just regarding my notion of rounds being too tough but also of thinking that I would definitely get time to sit for other companies because by the time my Uber’s rounds were over, it was almost 6 PM,and most of the companies were already done with their process,So had I not got selected in Uber,I might not have gotten an intern at Microsoft because that boosts me and push me harder beyond my expectations.So, always put the company you want to get into the most at the top of your priority order.
One more thing I would like to put a lot of emphasis is having as much sleep on the night before interview as possible(most of you would get a chance to have that) and not going to the interviews with an empty stomach. The reason I am putting this so strongly is that I have seen people messing up their rounds just because they were too sleep-deprived and hungry to even think properly during interviews. Trust me, after months of putting in the efforts, you definitely do not want your carelessness to be the reason of not getting selected, knowing that you had the potential.
Before the round, I had a small interaction with the HR of Uber(who was really really chill) which really helped me a lot. As I have mentioned, I had a lot of preconceptions about the questions in Uber’s interview, so I was really panicking before the rounds which this HR guy sensed during our talk and told me a lot of things,one of which I remember was that my project blown away his mind and also said that it’s a piece of cake for you.So,try to be friendly as possible with HR of companies.