Interview Questions

Vihari K. - "Situation: While working at CVS Health, our inventory management system for OTCHS products was facing challenges. We had increasing stock outs, and our existing data was insufficient to fully understand and address the issue since it has been only a year this product line was initiated. Action: Although we do have a forecasting model to predict demand and other algorithms to trigger out of stock flags to warehouses to fill them, lack of data points on seasonality, supplier delays, compliance"See full answer

Gaurav B. - "class TreeNode(var val: Int, var left: TreeNode? = null, var right: TreeNode? = null) fun isAverageOfDescendants(root: TreeNode?): Boolean { fun helper(node: TreeNode?): Triple { if (node == null) return Triple(0, 0, true) val (leftSum, leftCount, leftValid) = helper(node.left) val (rightSum, rightCount, rightValid) = helper(node.right) val totalSum = leftSum + rightSum val totalCount = leftCount + rightCount // If leaf n"See full answer

Michelle D. - "I'd tell the interviewer that I'd start off with clarifying the question to make sure I understand it correctly (see 1 below). Then, I'd tell the interviewer my approach to make sure they know what to expect as I talk through. Approach would start with discussing the mission and connecting a north star metric (NSM) to the mission, then discuss key product metrics that are inputs towards NSM. If there's time at the end and if the interviewer wants to go down this path, we should also talk about t"See full answer

Srikant V. - "Used Recursive approach to traverse the binary search tree and sum the values of the nodes that fall within the specified range [low, high]"See full answer

Mark G. - "Situation: At my previous company, we had more than 200 different data sources across 15 business units. These included CRM systems, marketing platforms, HR databases, and even third-party data feeds. The problem was that each team was managing data in its own way. This created inconsistent privacy controls, data quality issues, and compliance gaps, all of which were becoming urgent ahead of a major regulatory audit. Task: I was given the responsibility of implementing a unified data governance"See full answer

Anonymous Aardvark - "QUESTION: Imagine that you are a PM that owns the post booking experience at Airbnb.How would you solve for the worst post-booking experience? Follow-up questions: Specific business goal in mind? (no) What is my scope? Do I own all post booking across product category? Or is there a specific product that I am focussing on (events, homes, specific home duration)? (you chose) Am I focussing on the user - renter or event goer? Or the creator - host or event creator? (your choice) Do yo"See full answer

Sameer S. - "I: Design a banking app for kids S: Sure, let me start with clarifying questions. What is our goal for building this app? I: To create financial literacy early in childhood and also increase our customer base. S: Sure. Are we going to launch it globally or in any specific geography or demography? I: Globally. S: Sure, Any resource or time constraints to keep in mind because I need to prioritize the features on the roadmap based on that? Also, are we launching it on iOS or Android? I: No resource"See full answer

Mrinalini R. - "A good answer is describing an experience where you either proposed something that was selected after discussion or an alternate approach was taken, or you disagreed with a decision and argued for something else, either successfully or not. A good answer would be you had cogent arguments, the decision went another way for some reason, and you then fully backed the decision (agree to disagree is another way of stating it). You did not take it personally and you fully committed to the deci"See full answer

Dhruv S. - "Before proceeding, I just wanted to clarify we wanted to check for the impact of showing content from non-friends in users’ feeds, and here non-friends I would assume could be anyone, but mainly like content creators, and I am not including ads here. But I wanted to ask if there is any current logic as to what posts to show based on users' affinity to those posts, maybe basis the user engagement to Insta feed. now objective of this would be to improve the engagement of the platform, as if users"See full answer

S G. - "Clarification questions: How are these metrics calculated? Get context on why these metrics are important? Are we looking at any specific role? Benchmarking: What is the current time to hire? How does this compare to competitors? Do we have a desired goal/target for these metrics? Problem Solving: I began by analyzing the various steps in the hiring process and the number of days taken at each stage. Soon realised that the bulk of the time is taken in a few steps (80/20). Drilled down further"See full answer

Astro S. - "What are they looking for in the answer? "See full answer

Rajat A. - "CQs: Any specific geography? Assuming Indian market Are we partnering up with some other company for delivery ? Assuming yes Time frame for MVP? 1 year Scoped out Problem statement: Design a food delivery app for restaurant owners for India market within a timeframe of 1 year Mission of this app: Helping owners and vendors in smooth coordination of orders and delivering orders on time Product goal: Since this is a new product , we will focus on adoption/acquisition in short t"See full answer

Syed I. - "I use a data driven approach by ensuring there is a deep-dive on all alternatives. My approach to tradeoffs is around how to achieve the customer experience needed. I ensure there is an immediate path to green for a solution and a follow-up solution addressing the problem rightly."See full answer

B. T. - "The interviewer was interested how the system design would be for files, directories, symbolic links. After proposing my idea, I was asked to print all files for a given path."See full answer

Glados - "Prompt - annual cost of managing Google photos (note - I believe Google doesn't ask estimation question anymore, not sure who/here/how this was asked) We will go over what Google photos is, its users, how they use photos, what costs are incurred, estimation - base case then scale it out, gut check the answers, and arrive at an estimate Google photos is a photo and video storage service. Its users are Content creators/users Google (hosting) Other service providers that provide value-add"See full answer

Kai H. - "I have 2 product feedbacks. I think it has been mentioned by many users of the platform. Provide a text summary of the videos so that we do not have to watch through the whole interview practice Actually comment if the interview was good or not, currently we do not really know if the answer given is of high quality "See full answer

XYZ - "We have observed that DAU have been declining, while MAU has remained constant. Activity is define as: Logging in. Viewing content. Posting content. Interacting with other users (likes, comments, etc.). Daily Active Users (DAU): This measures the number of unique users who engage with Instagram on a daily basis. It indicates how frequently users interact with the platform and reflects its daily stickiness. Monthly Active Users (MAU): This measures the number of unique users who en"See full answer

Tiffany A. - "SELECT customer_id, order_date, orderid AS secondearliestorderid FROM ( SELECT order_id, customer_id, order_date, ROWNUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY customerid, orderdate ORDER BY orderid ASC) AS rank FROM orders ) WHERE rank = 2 ORDER BY orderdate, customerid `"See full answer