Interview Questions

Pranay N. - "Okay, so before we start discussing how to design this platform, I have a few questions I need details on. Clarification Questions: What do you mean by "Podcasting Platform"? Producing a platform and releasing it online takes several steps (Ideation, scripting, equipment selection, recording, editing, choosing a platform to release, etc.). Are we looking at any specific step here? - Free to Assume Am I PM at Google designing a Podcast Platform as a tool inside existing Google Pro"See full answer

Ajay P. - "Designing an evaluation framework for ads ranking is crucial for optimizing the effectiveness and relevance of ads displayed to users. Here's a comprehensive framework that you can use: Define Objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):** \\Click-Through Rate (CTR):\\ The ratio of clicks to impressions, indicating the effectiveness of an ad in attracting user attention. \\Conversion Rate:\\ The ratio of conversions (e.g., sign-ups, purchases) to clicks, measuring how well"See full answer

Tiffany A. - "SELECT employees.first_name, managers.salary AS manager_salary FROM employees LEFT JOIN employees AS managers ON employees.manager_id = managers.id WHERE employees.salary > managers.salary `"See full answer

KAI - "Answer: select fromcaller, count(DISTINCT tocallee) as num_calls from calls group by fromcaller having count(DISTINCT tocallee) >= 3 Setup: CREATE TABLE calls ( from_caller VARCHAR(20), to_callee VARCHAR(20) ); INSERT INTO calls (fromcaller, tocallee) VALUES ('Alice', 'Bob'), ('Charlie', 'Dave'), ('Alice', 'Frank'), ('Charlie', 'Heidi'), ('Charlie', 'Judy'); "See full answer

Justin G. - "Observation This is an interesting question. The solution has two heads, meaning that the user must feel less guilty AND the solution must also increase revenue towards the platform. Structure The way I would approach this involves splitting the question into sequential steps. Why are users feeling guilty about using Instagram? What are some ways to make them feel less guilty? How can we monetize this? Clarification How do we define guilt? Is there a relevant subsector of"See full answer

Shubham S. - "Introduction UberSenior is a new service offered by Uber that provides safe, reliable, and convenient transportation for senior citizens. This PRD outlines the key features, functionalities, and user experience for both seniors and drivers using UberSenior. Problem Statement Existing transportation options for seniors often have limitations, including: Accessibility: Lack of vehicles equipped for mobility aids or physical limitations Technology barriers: Difficulty using smartphone"See full answer

Aneesh M. - "In the Slack system design interview, I proposed a WebSocket-based architecture for real-time messaging, supported by a network of distributed chat servers. To track user connections and route messages efficiently, I leveraged ZooKeeper as a service registry and designed peer-to-peer communication between servers. For the data layer: • I used PostgreSQL to manage relational data such as users and chat participants. • Cassandra was chosen for high-throughput, scalable message storage with dura"See full answer

Umang S. - "Just a bit of context on what could be a risk in Product or Software Development. We talk about the Scope, Quality, and Time Triangle. IMHO the only variables that can matter and can pose risk are these. Try to form an answer where you used the Effort, Value, Risk framework to quantify the risk. The answer can be similar to short term sacrifices for long term gains, as you do take in mind the risk the short term sacrifices pose. Situation - I was leading the team to complete an overhaul of the"See full answer

Ankit J. - "Clarifying Questions: Are we looking to create a product for creators or the end users? - Creators What kind of product are we looking to build? (App /Website/Embedded within the Instagram product ) - Embedded within the app Why do we want to enter the edtech market? (Anything specific insight we have gained which we want to solve for?) - The creator's market is growing substantially and people want to gain knowledge on how to become successful in it. Are there any money or time con"See full answer

Neha P. - "The mini case was very much interviewer led and the questions asked were following: Tell the value proposition of Capital One Shopping to a senior executive who has recently joined Capital One What factors would you consider to expand Capital One Shopping? Technical Considerations? AB testing analysis - Interviewer shared AB testing results and asked for my recommendation Summarize"See full answer

Karthik M. - "Assumptions & Clarifications This is a platform based on YouTube, and it can use associated Google Products like Gmail, GDocs, GSheets etc along with Youtube as a base platform. Do you have any specific goals with the platform? For instance, should this be the de facto platform for Universities K12 schools etc? Assumption is that it can be used by anyone. Let us first discuss the target users, and then arrive at appropriate goals that we can use to measure the adoption of the produc"See full answer

Kat - "Clarification: What types of jobs are we targeting? Are we talking about a broad market (like Indeed) or more focused—white-collar (LinkedIn-style) or blue-collar (gigs and tasks)? Where are we launching the marketplace—U.S. or globally? Let’s assume U.S. for now. Is this a standalone product or integrated within one of Meta’s existing platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram)? Let’s assume it’s integrated into Facebook. Overview: Meta’s Mission: Why would Meta want to launch a"See full answer

Alvis F. - "Requirements and Goals Primary Goal:Store key-value pairs in a cache with efficient access (reads/writes). Evict items based on a certain “rank,” which might reflect popularity, frequency, or custom ranking logic. Functional Requirements:Put(key, value, rank): Insert or update a key with the given value and rank. Get(key): Retrieve the value associated with the key if it exists. Evict(): If the cache is at capacity, evict the item with the lowest rank (or according"See full answer

Fahad K. - "Alright, let's think through this change of moving the 'like' button to a menu under three dots on photos I'll start by aligning this change with Facebook's mission, analyze key insights, define the product mission for this update, Identify the eco-system (n-sided marketplace) Look at the effects on the eco-systems, Effects on their needs and pain points. Identify the most important actors and most important actions Come up with some metrics that we may be using to"See full answer

Palak A. - "Designing a system to deny services to requests from banned IPs involves integrating real-time IP checking with your service architecture. Here’s a detailed outline of how you can design such a system: System Design Overview The goal is to ensure that your service can efficiently check incoming requests against a list of banned IPs and deny access when necessary. The system will leverage an external API, security.gov.x, to determine if an IP address is blocked or allowed. **Key Compone"See full answer

WaterBuffalo - "One of the most challenging situations was joining a new startup to realize that they did not figure out their core product and that customers were dissatisfied and leaving in droves. I worked together with the leaders to understand the core issue and the reasons that the customers were leaving. Then together with the team, we set out to map out those core issues and the gaps that we had in our product. We then worked towards designing a new solution to address those gaps and build an MVP. W"See full answer

Javed S. - "One good reason for using the doubly linked list is that to remove an accessed item in the list from its existing position say in the middle of the list and move it to the head, you need to update the previous node's next pointer and the next node's previous pointer. A singly linked list only has next pointers, so removing from the middle would require traversing from the head to find the previous node which requires O(n) time. A doubly linked list allows O(1) removal from any position because w"See full answer

Aabid S. - "I work at a startup that makes software for Law Enforcement and the FBI. Our product analyzes calls being made by prison inmates and "listens" for predictors of violence and criminal behavior. Our clients are some of the top state prisons in the country. Recently one of the largest states in the country decided to evaluate our product for their prison system. I demo'd the product to the officers and they seemed to like everything. During the presentation they asked us if the product was ADA com"See full answer

Praveen - "Narrow down scope with clarifying questions: Confirm that Reactions are the like, love, sad and other icons that facebook users can respond with on your post. Understand the metric: is "down" ... absolute number or is it a ratio of reactions per post? Understand the boundary conditions: Is it specific to a certain region, certain segment of users (only from new users versus active users), happening on personal posts or group posts, happening on app versus desktop/mobile etc. Under"See full answer