This was supposed to be published alongside my other interview experience at ZestMoney, Fynd, but I've been procrastinating this for a long time now 😅😅, so finally, I took some time to write this down 💪.

How It Started:

Amidst my preparation, giving interviews and failing 😭 in late Nov 2021 and early Dec 2021, I randomly saw this job posting at Tekion for Associate Software Engineer - Frontend (Associate Software Engineer at Tekion will be applicable for 0-2 years exp candidates) and I went ahead and applied.

After a couple of weeks i.e at the end of Dec 2021 recruiter reached out to me and we discussed the role, she asked me about my experience, years of experience, expected salary and all. Post that, she schedule 1st round of interviews which was taken by a third-party company. Some sign of relief 😌

I don't know why, but I've only given 2 rounds of interviews excluding salary discussion for this role.

Round 1: Covered almost all topics i.e, DSA, JS, Web fundamentals, Machine Coding

• Some simple JS output based questions like Closures, Async APIs, Hoisting, etc

• Problem solving in JS: implement deepCopy()

• DSA - two sum problem with and without a sorted array

• Machine Coding - implement a basic react app to fetch and display from external API, follow questions were to add some features like searching, filtering, etc

I would say it was an easy/medium level interview for me, one should be able to solve these questions pretty easily if the fundaments are strong.

Round 2: HM Round

After a couple of days, the recruiter reached out and confirmed that I cleared my first round 🥳🥳 and then she scheduled my second round which was a hiring manager round.

To my surprise 🤯, this interview was full of machine coding with react. He asked me to build a matching pair of cards game, it was something like, we have to select one card and another random card, and if both are the same you have to keep them in an open state otherwise both of them should be closed, this was the requirement.

I could able to solve it under the timeframe and suddenly he asked about my salary expectations(It was weird to me because I haven't seen any HM asking about salary expectations).

I've put my expectations and informed him about my other competing offers.

Result:

On the same day of the second interview, the recruiter reached out and confirmed that I've cleared the interview and they're moving forward to the salary discussion round 🥳 🤑.

After a week or so they have scheduled another round with the lead HR where she explained about salary structure, ESOPS, benefits, etc.

They've given me 5 days to accept or reject the offer, as I have another better offer I politely rejected them ❌.

Closing Thoughts:

I hope someone can find some value out of this interview experience and I wish y'all all the best for the hustle 🙌. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter if you have any sort of queries.

Thank you.

This is the second post of my interview experiences as a Frontend Engineer, check out my ZestMoney interview experience

In this post, I would like to share my interview experience for the SDE-1 Frontend Engineer position at Fynd

So as always, whenever I see a job posting that I think I can apply for, I reach out to folks on LinkedIn to get a referral, this time I saw this job posting on Angellist. Luckily someone was kind enough to refer me. This was in late Nov 2021.

After a week or so, the recruiter reached out to me and scheduled the first set of rounds.

The first two rounds were taken by the Barraiser platform. These rounds were not elimination rounds, after completing the two rounds I got the cumulative feedback.

Here there's no order to schedule the rounds, we can schedule in any way because anyhow the result will be a cumulative one.

Barraiser - Round 1: 1 hr

So this round was completely new to me, basically, I think this is more inclined towards senior engineers or experienced candidates 🤷‍♂️. Because the point of focus for these rounds was Architecture & Design, Performance Optimisation, Build & Release. And it was framework agnostic, as I have experience in React it was mostly around that.

As I don't have enough experience interviewer asked me to explain the current project that I've been working on. He dug deep into how we handle project architecture, building components, styling, building pages, handling routing, data fetching, state management, handling reusability, writing tests, etc.

Here's a simplified example.

//Components

ComponentA
 - ComponentA.tsx
 - ComponentA.styles.tsx //we use MUI
 - ComponentA.spec.tsx

//State

Module
 - action.ts
 - reducer.ts
 - reducer.spec.ts

//Internal component structure like

export const Comp = () => {
.
.
.
return (
.
.
.
)
}

I was asked to code an example project like ☝️ on a high level on an online editor, and he also dug deep into how we handled performance issues, re-rendering, etc.

And after this, we had some discussion regarding general web topics like performance optimisation, security, CSR vs SSR, local vs session storage, and similar topics.

Barraiser - Round 2: 1 hr

Okay, so the interviewer started by asking me my introduction, past projects, current projects and right after this he started with technical questions.

• Some basic JS output based questions like setTimeout with var and let, hoisting questions.

• Implement flattening the array question, debouncing and throttling

• I was given a mock(I think it was like a photo gallery) and asked me to implement using HTML, CSS

As I already practised very well I could able to handle these questions smoothly.

Fynd Team - Round 1: 1 hr

After a couple of days, the recruiter reached out to me and said it was positive and scheduled this first round with the team.

There were two panellists one was a senior engineer who was asking the questions and the other was just in silence through the call(maybe they're training her to take interviews). So we started introducing ourselves and he explained to me the structure of the interview, it was like

• JS output based questions

• DSA

• Machine coding.

I was asked a lot of output based questions with the theory behind them, the expectation was to answer the question and explain how it worked, there were around 10 questions and I could able to answer most of them, he gave me some hints for the questions I couldn't able to answer properly.

After that, I was asked to code two sum problems as part of the DSA section.

After that, I was given some random grid-based UI and I was asked to implement using HTML, CSS. Here as I was not much comfortable in advance grid patterns I used flexbox and I couple able to match the given mock perfectly. But I think he was not satisfied with the approach that I took.

Fynd - Round 2: 1 hr

As I've guessed it right, the recruiter reached out to me and said they want to conduct another round as they were not satisfied with the HTML, CSS part. After a couple of days, this round was scheduled and to my surprise, the second panellist in the first interview was my interviewer for this round 😂.

And this was one of my worst interview experiences so far, she gave me a dashboard mock which is similar to this and asked me to implement as much as I can in 15 mins 🤯🤯.

I used reactjs and did basic HTML skeleton with components and a bit of styling for one section of the page, and even after 15 mins she asked me to continue, I was like WTF(maybe she expected to complete the page in 15 mins or what ?), and honestly how much we can build in 15 mins 🤦‍♂️. This was gone past 45 mins at this point

And after this, she asked me one JS problem-solving question, I coded it and ran the test cases, everything was perfect, but she said it was not the right approach that she's been looking for and asked me to modify, again I got frustrated and I said what's wrong in this, every test case with edge cases are working.

After a couple of days, I got my rejection mail(I was expecting this and I'm happy about it).

I asked for feedback but haven't got any response 😔.

Closing Thoughts:

• I made some mistakes in the process and learnt from them, which helped me to get better.

• Sometimes interviewers make mistakes, and it's fine, eventually, we learn from our mistakes.

• Just don't give up and be patient.

That's it, I hope this post will be helpful to you all and if you have any queries/suggestions comment down below or you can reach out to me via Twitter.

So I've been rigorously interviewing for frontend engineering positions for a couple of months now and in the process, I got a chance to interview at ZestMoney as an SDE-1(Web), it is basically a Frontend Engineer position. So here's the interview experience from asking for a referral to the end.

So one random day I saw an SDE-1(Web) job posting on LinkedIn and immediately I took the job id and started sending out connections for the employees, lucky I got connected with a few of them and one person replied and referred me to the role, he was really supportive throughout my interview process and I really appreciate him for his help through the process. This was somewhere in Dec 2021 last week.

How It Started:

After this, I got the call from the recruiter the next day itself. And we had a quick chat regarding the role and other typical HR questions like expected salary, current salary, etc... and she scheduled the first round.

Round 1(Screening Round): 1 hr

This is an online test on Hackerrank which consisted of 3 questions 👇

• DSA question: Brackets pair-matching matching problem.

• JavaScript Problem Solving: Flatten Array problem.

• HTML, CSS question: It was a simple UI question, where I have to build 3 circles circumcised inside one other UI(I'm not really getting how can I frame this 😅)

Round 2 (Tech Discussion): 1 hr

Hurray 🥳🥳, I cleared the OA.

The second round was mostly a discussion(a little bit of hands-on coding) about my past projects, current work, web fundamentals(HTML, CSS, JS) like hoisting, closures, async programming, etc..., there were no DSA questions involved but the interviewer asked me to code some JS problems like implementing closure examples, implementing Map() prototype.

Not to mention we discussed a good amount of HTML, CSS questions as well, ex: async vs defer, position properties, box modal, event listeners, etc

Round 3 (Problem Solving & Machine Coding): 1hr

Pheww 😌

Fortunately, I cleared the first round as well. This third one was completely a hands-on coding round, and here are the problems that the interviewer asked

1st one:

Given an array of objects [{banana: 5, apples:5}, {pear: 6}, {apples: 5}, {banana:2}], return an object with the sum of all the fruits

Ex: { apples: 10, banana: 7, pear:6 }

2nd one:

Given a number in string format, return a single-digit no by recursively adding the digits in a string format

Ex: 
 - Input: '345'
 - Output: '3'

This JS fiddle contains my solutions for these questions

3rd one:

Build a dynamic form component with a progress bar indicating the progress of the inputs that were filled. We have to use an object and render the form accordingly

This was my solution.

As I was running out of time and the dynamic form component obviously takes some time, the interviewer was kind enough to ask me to send the solution after a couple of hours of completing the interview.

I was totally exhausted 😮‍💨🥵 throughout the day because I also gave an interview to another company right after this round

Round 4 (HM Round): 30 mins

After clearing the third round, I was very much confident that I'm going to get this offer. It was mostly like a conversation between us, the interviewer started by asking me my past experience, my journey and the current projects that I've been working on.

And later on, the interviewer asked me some situational questions like

• How do you review a pull request.

• Is there any situation where there was a huge gap of understanding between me and the product manager.

• What's the motivation to join ZestMoney

After that, I also asked some questions related to projects, tech stack, culture, etc.

Round 5 (Culture-Fit Round): 30 mins

Again this was like a casual discussion about me and my personal and professional goals, IMHO, I felt this round was/is unnecessary instead they can have 1 hr of HM round.

And the end of it, the interviewer told me that HR will get in touch with me for the next steps.

Offer Stage:

So after a couple of days, the first HR reached out to me via email and asked me for some documents to release an offer, at this point it was more than a month since I'd given the Hackerrank test and to my surprise in spite of conducting too many rounds and grilling me out, they didn't meet my expectations and competing offers, so I directly rejected in the phone call itself.

I think my second round was not that great, maybe because there were expecting me to solve all the questions in that 1 hr itself, and that's why they didn't want to match the offer 🤷‍♂️.

How It Went:

Closing Thoughts:

• Understand the fundaments very well 🧠.

• Referral actually works, just be patient 💪.

• Luck do favours, sometimes maybe 🤣.

That's it, I hope this post will be helpful to you all and if you have any queries/suggestions comment down below or you can reach out to me via Twitter.

Thankfully I got an offer from a good start-up, will be joining them soon, All the best for your interviews, good luck 🤞🤞.

problem link

Here's the question

There is already Array.prototype.flat() in JavaScript (ES2019), which reduces the nesting of Array. Could you manage to implement your own one?. Here is an example to illustrate

const arr = [1, [2], [3, [4]]];

flat(arr)
// [1, 2, 3, [4]]

flat(arr, 1)
// [1, 2, 3, [4]]

flat(arr, 2)
// [1, 2, 3, 4]

follow up: Are you able to solve it both recursively and iteratively?

Here's my recursive approach

/**
 * @param { Array } arr
 * @param { number } depth
 * @returns { Array }
 */

function flat(arr, depth = 1) {
  // let's take an array to store the final result
  let flattenedArr = []

 //base condition: If the depth is 0 we should return the original array
  if(depth ==0 ) return arr

// traverse through the elements of the given array
  arr.forEach(ele => {

    // find if the element is an array and if it is an array,
   // recursively call the flat function while reducing the depth by 1
    if(Array.isArray(ele)){
      flattenedArr = flattenedArr.concat(flat(ele, depth-1))
    }

   // else, we can directly add the element into the array
    else {
      flattenedArr = flattenedArr.concat(ele)
    }
  })

  // finally, return the flattended array
  return flattenedArr
}

Here's my iterative approach

/**
 * @param { Array } arr
 * @param { number } depth
 * @returns { Array }
 */

function flat(arr, depth = 1) {
  // let's take an array to store final result
  const flattenedArr = []

 // To do this problem iteratily we need either stack or queue, 
 // let's take stack that stores value of the element with the depth
  const stack = [...arr.map(ele => [ele, depth])]

  // loop though the stack until it's length is valid
  while(stack.length > 0){

    //let's destructure the current top along with it's depth and pop it out from stack
    const [top, depth] = stack.pop()

    // if the current top is an array and has a valid depth,
    // push the modified array with the elements and the depth reduced to 1
    if(Array.isArray(top) && depth > 0){
      stack.push(...top.map(ele => [ele, depth - 1]))
    }

   // else, push the value of top to the flattendArr
   else{
      flattenedArr.push(top)
    }
  }

  // As we started the process from the last element, 
  // we need to reverse the array to return the final result 
return flattenedArr.reverse()
}

Conclusion

Thanks for going through the problem, I'll be adding more problems in the blog as I continue to practice, feel free to like, share & comment your feedback.

problem link

Here's the question

Create a sum(), which makes the following possible

const sum1 = sum(1)
sum1(2) == 3 // true
sum1(3) == 4 // true
sum(1)(2)(3) == 6 // true
sum(5)(-1)(2) == 6 // true

Here's the Solution

/**
 * @param {number} num
 */

function sum(num) {

 // create a recursive function to call `sum()` with argument
   const func = function(num2){
    return sum(num + num2) // return the recursive function
  }

  // assign `valueOf` so that the function can be compared with the number
  func.valueOf = () => num;

 // return the func 
  return func
}

Conclusion

Thanks for going through the problem, I'll be adding more problems in the blog as I continue to practice, feel free to like, share & comment your feedback.

problem link

Here's the question.

Q. Currying is a useful technique used in JavaScript applications. Please implement a curry() function, which accepts a function and return a curried one. Here is an example

const join = (a, b, c) => {
   return `${a}_${b}_${c}`
}

const curriedJoin = curry(join)

curriedJoin(1, 2, 3) // '1_2_3'

curriedJoin(1)(2, 3) // '1_2_3'

curriedJoin(1, 2)(3) // '1_2_3'

Here's the Solution:

/**
 * @param { (...args: any[]) => any } fn
 * @returns { (...args: any[]) => any }
 */

function curry(fn) {

  return function curried(...args){
     // Check if the `fn` passed have enough args or not

    if(args.length >= fn.length){
     // If there are enough args call the `fn` with the `args`

      return fn.apply(this, args)
    } 
   else{

    // Else bind the function with the remaining args and recursively return it.
        return curried.bind(this, ...args)
    }
  }
}

Conclusion

Thanks for going through the problem, I'll be adding more problems in the blog as I continue to practice, feel free to like, share & comment your feedback.