Interview Questions

Anonymous Crab - "Super helpful video on metrics and experimentation design! However, I did not see any discussion on the actual algorithm improvement ideas. So it left me with these questions: 1) How would you actually improve the algorithm? (e.g. sorting based on amenities preferences, miles from airport, etc.). Of course, totally makes sense that we would test how that improvement moved our chosen success metrics. 2) Should we be choosing one metric or one set of metrics we want to optimize for when we impro"See full answer

Shanavas M. - "I will have a discussion with him regarding why he disagrees with my solution. I will try to present him a plan about my solution. why I think its the best approach and take his feedback. I will try to analyze his approach and find the best in both approach. Will try to discuss with him and come up with an approach which is agreeable to both parties. The idea is refining the solution and approach instead of personally taking the disagreement. I will make sure that we are attacking the problem"See full answer

Kwabena B. - "Assumptions This estimation will not take into consideration service fees, delivery fees, or tips we are specifically interested in consumer purchases of fruits and vegetables from local grocers (i.e. instacart, peapod, wholefoods/primenow, etc.) Fresh and frozen produce are in scope Equation NYC annual online produce purchases = (Num NYC households) x (% pop. that purchase produce online) x ($ spent on online produce purchases) (NYC HH) = 300M Americans --> 100M HH"See full answer

fuzzyicecream14 - "App I Don’t Like: Electrify America What Electrify America Is Supposed to Do Electrify America is an app designed to help electric vehicle (EV) owners locate, access, and pay for fast-charging stations across the U.S. The app provides real-time station availability, allows users to initiate and monitor charging sessions, and offers membership plans for discounted rates. Ideally, it should enable a seamless charging experience, especially for long-distance travelers relying on i"See full answer

Karthik R. - "Good Discussion on the distributed messaging queues (Complex topic with lot of nuances) Liked the mind-map style drawing of requirements and metrics capture Touched on different types of queue styles (point to point, pub-sub, fan-out/fan-in) Storage and WAL usage was interesting Some distributed queue challenges that could be helpful to highlight / expand are: Message guarantee / semantics - Ordering of messages across different servers Replication Master slave architecture or Pe"See full answer

Sankar S. - "We will not always have all the required data to make a decision quickly. We need to work with ambiguity effectively by tying up the available facts with intuition."See full answer

BePostive - "· Listen both sides and without any bias. Support or focus on the problem rather than person. Take necessary steps in case there is middle ground its well and good if both parties agree. If not be honest and support the person who is correct. Ultimate goal is to be useful for overall project and company rather individual satisfaction. The approach should be fit into overall team goal."See full answer

Amit A. - "What are you strengths -: My strengths would include my eagerness to learn. This allows me to be open to new projects, roles and products and I can give my 100% to achieve the goals expected of me Other strengths would include my collaborative approach to work. I believe a team can achieve tremendous success if shares a common goal, respects other's opinions and contribution and is built on fundamental of trust Finally my biggest strength would be my commitment and passion to solve the custome"See full answer

Viet H. - "Estimate how much it costs Google to store a year free of storage of photos for new Pixel Phones Clarify with Questions Know the Basic Numbers Decide on and Lay Down Your Structure Write Down the Equations Crunch Numbers Sanity Check Clarify with Questions Are we talking about cost per person? Whole user base? What do you mean when you are talking costs? Cost to build the facility? Cost to just store the data as a result o"See full answer

Navin T. - "Clarification Questions : Do all 10000 persons need Email access, or is 10000 people the colony's size? : Yes, 10000 people will use emails. As I am a PM for Gmail, I assume we are focusing just on email as a form of communication: Yes. Are there any requirements on the size of attachments allowable in the emails? : I will leave it up to you. Understand the user behavior -> Identify key metrics -> Make quantitative estimation -> Understand plans -> Propose network bandwidth. User b"See full answer

Eduardo C. - "I started asking some questions regarding the constrains of the system: An antena is emitting a signal that says if the tagged device was out of the room where the interview was happening. I was able to decide which would be the schema for the Antena's message. The antena is sending the info of multiple users. The system doesn't need to push notification to the users when the user left the device behind. Upon reflection, this is what I recollected doing. I propuse the json schema a"See full answer

Ravindra R. - "First, I want to understand why Airbnb is considering expanding into the restaurant space. Is the goal more user engagement, or unlock new monetization paths, or make the travel journey more memorable by connecting people with food? Next, I want to define what success would look like for this expansion. That could mean high guest engagement or a boost in revenue. Third, I will look at things like the volume of Airbnb travelers to the region, how big the dining market is, who the local competitor"See full answer

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

Yair G. - "Are we speaking of all Meta Ads products on something specific? All of them Meta is a social media and AI company that generates most of it's revenue from Ads on social media. Meta's mission is to empower people to build communities and bring the world closer together. If ads violate the community guidelines regulations that can directly hurt both Meta's mission and its revenue stream. For example ads that include hate speech are against community guidelines and also hurts Meta's mission. Ha"See full answer

Sachin P. - "The key here is a) not to overreact to Sales bypassing me going straight to Engineering (while understanding every team acts according to their incentives), and b) communicate with all parties as much as possible to get everyone on the same page. 1) First, I'd speak to Sales and understand the feature being requested. I consider Sales to be one of the most important primary research funnels - they have direct, regular touchpoints with the client and are finely attuned to the lifeblood o"See full answer

Ishan S. - "I can see that Gen Z (born between 1995 and 2009) needs a redesigned washing machine with a busier life than ever, newer living arrangements, and a longer time frame. Let's try and understand why we need a new product for Gen Z: Clarifying question - 1) Do we have a specific goal while redesigning the machine? Should we optimize for speed, space, or functionalities? (Assume - No) 2) Do we have geographical constraints? Countries have different power and electrical thresholds, which can decide"See full answer

Krishnaveni G. - "Since a bitonic array first increases then decreases, we can: Find the peak using binary search (O(log n)) Reverse the decreasing half Merge the two sorted halvesThis gives an overall time complexity of O(n)."See full answer

Vijay P. - "Explained in STAR format one of the project situation where I had originally approved problem with different design which was correct approach that time. But as the project progressed that approach needed revision. Emphasized on facts why original approach was taken with points. Also focused tail end of discussion on learnings out of situation and how you end up deploying better solution from that learning."See full answer

Vishal S. - "Product Understanding - Ads are what you see from companies as stories, posts, reels. Post are from users (connections). We have to design an experience which produces maximum engagement while generating ad revenue. Clarifying Questions - Is it specific to posts/stories/reels ? Is there an existing post to ads ratio or do we have to start from scratch? Is it specific to a device/OS? Is it specific to a region/user demographic? Assumption - Existing posts to ads ratio"See full answer