Interview Questions

Deepti D. - "Clarifying questions: Who is launching this service (some options that come to mind are): Google ? If yes, why? Will it be a new product within the Google ecosystem or feature within existing and relevant Google Products (google maps, search) Startup? What is the current status of the startup/service designing it for hotels Uber/Taxi service providers - Trying to diversify their revenue stream/ add new level of engagement? Hospitality companies/hotels? B"See full answer

Araz J. - "Time taken: ~40min. I made up how Gmail Ads work A: Do you mind if I clarify a few things about this question? G: Sure! A: I would like to understand what Gmail ads is and how it works? G: Gmail ads are interactive ads that show in the Promotions and Social tabs of your inbox. A: I know there can be other emails under Promotions or Social tab such as different brands sending promotional emails. G: Gmail ads look different and are labeled as "ads by gmail" A: Great. And how does Gmail ads make"See full answer

James M. - "Break down into: OPEX #Employees x $avg. cost per employee $Overhead (mktg, legal, compliance) Content cost (creator payments) 80% of advert. revenue Elec, cooling, maintenance CAPEX #Data centers Avg servers per data center Avg. cost $ per server"See full answer

Ash J. - "Clarify: Has metric definition changed for what the NSM is and app startup time?-->No Are we sure that this not just a correlation and causal? For e.g. We would need to dive into a few different technical buckets around regional, version and other features launched-->No Time period: Is it over the same time period?--> Yes Goal: FB goal: Empower people to build community and bring world close"See full answer

Nilanjan D. - "Amazon Prime will generally have a limited group of uploaders rather than a million of them. This should influence the design of the Uploader service as it doesn't need to scale that much. Also the Encoding service role was not too clear"See full answer

Nr 9. - "Assumptions: The question is for a PM working for a refrigerator startup company and for a domestic refrigerator (not industrial). The first model comes in the most commonly used form factor with fridge/freezer split, and it has standard cooling specifications. Target market is the US. The startup is for profit. Product goal: To make interacting with refrigerator easy, seamless and pleasurable for the blind. Target users and channel partners: Fully blind people between the ages o"See full answer

Ds S. - "Initially I asked clarifying questions like whether the tree can be empty or not and asked the interviewer to explain what is meant by left view and the explanation for the sample inputs. Then I came up with the level order traversal approach where we visit each level in the binary tree at once using a queue and at each level print the value of the first node. Interviewer seemed satisfied with the approach and asked me to code it up. Finally gave the time and space complexity of the solution."See full answer

Nicholas S. - "First thing the interviewee did wrong is not asking clarifying questions. This is the most vague problem I have every heard, and the interviewee just made assumptions and started programming."See full answer

Yugaank K. - "A recursive backtracking solution in python. def changeSigns(nums: List[int], S: int) -> int: res = [] n = len(nums) def backtrack(index, curr, arr): if curr == S and len(arr) == n: res.append(arr[:]) return if index >= len(nums): return for i in range(index, n): add +ve number arr.append(nums[i]) backtrack(i+1, curr + nums[i], arr) arr.pop() "See full answer

Rashmi T. - "It depends on how computers are distributed. Are they located within same network (behind same switch or router) or distributed across globally? Also, it depends upon if there are any security related encryption or decryption algorithms being executed. Similarly, there are so many factors involved in it. However, if a system is highly responsive then this time might be less than 1 second. For example, any google search responds in less than 1 sec. It is an interesting question and I am eager t"See full answer

Chitapuram N. - "Since there is a need for the data to be accurate and consistent without any latency to allocate a spot, can't the data be synchronously synced to replicas after every write as the number of writes are not many per min, instead of read lock phenomena Let me know if i am on a wrong thought here."See full answer

corrie881 - "The question is about Netflix users decreasing 10%, not about delivery app."See full answer

Satej M. - "Problem Statement: 10% of Netflix users are inactive. How would you investigate? Clarifying Question: Define inactive users? Assuming these are the users who have not logged Netflix for last week/last month etc Time span to measure inactive users? Assuming inactive users are inactive from last week. Investigation Questions: Has there been a change or error logged on the analytical tool we are measuring "Inactive users" metric? Does the metric show Netflix inactive"See full answer

Pratik M. - "Few clarifying questions here Is the competitor a service and does it have other offerings as well? Is it charging $5 for a service or only email? Is it for a specific platform here? Or does it include all platforms? Does the competitor have a huge market share/or is it a small company? Let's assume it's only for email's The structure I would want to layout for knowing what to do next for Gmail would be the following - Mission, Goals, Google's revenue model, Customer Profiles using Gm"See full answer

FuzzyLogic - "Context Photo app || Click images, videos via mobile app (android, ios) + editing + share + upload Who are we? || Startup who wants to build accessibility apps for the disabled people Why do we want to build this app? || Current apps are not usable by visually impaired, we can bring difference & gain market share. Constraints || To launch in next 12 months Is this app exclusively targeted for blind? || Yes but regular people may also use it but not our main target group **Goa"See full answer

Shiva S. - "Clarification: Believe no constraints such as for specific market or for specific device, No specific goal , can explore what improve means. Goal: can I assume improve user experience and resolve pain points, and not around monetization So goal could be to improve engagement and higher customer satisfaction with google news as a product, so basically more usage, and lower churn So more DAU Users: Consumers based on how they consume: Deep dive into news reports in a specific area of the"See full answer

Rachita D. - "I will start with making sure that I have a clear understanding of Medium and how it works. I will ask the interviewer to fill in any gaps in my knowledge of Medium. Medium is a platform for novice, and professional writers to express/share their opinions readers to read about subjects that matter to them the platform has been running for some time (6-7 years), so it is relatively mature (this confirms that Medium has found a product-market fit) Here is my high-level structure for answeri"See full answer

Mitchell K. - "What has been the most complex System Design question you were asked?"See full answer