Interview Questions

Bamboo Y. - "Since the problem asks for a O(logN) solution, I have to assume that the numbers are already sorted, meaning the same number are adjacent to each other, the value of the numbers shouldn't matter, and they expect us to use Binary Search. First, we should analyze the pattern of a regular number array without a single disrupter. Index: 0 1 2 3 4. 5 6. 7. 8. 9 Array:[1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6] notice the odd indexes are always referencing the second of the reoccurring numbers and t"See full answer

Richard W. - "int getMaxWater(vector& nums) { int n = nums.size(); int mx = INT_MIN; int i=0, j=n-1; while(i<j) { int water = (j - i) * min(nums[i], nums[j]); mx = max(mx, water); if(nums[i] < nums[j]){ i++; } else { j--; } } return mx; } `"See full answer

Michael A. - "First, I want to get a better sense of what is a DAU. What is considered “Active”? User sending message, reading message, opening app? All of the them, any activity within the Messenger App Second, it’s important to know the context of the change. What timeframe was this over? Let’s assume this was over the past 30 days. Ok, a follow up to this would be to check if this is a seasonal pattern? For example, there could be a correlation to Messenger usage and school starting. **This"See full answer

Jacob S. - "Cloud computing is like going out to a restaurant instead of cooking dinner at home. When you cook at home, you have to do everything yourself. You need to use your own plates, pots, and pans. You have to know how many people are coming over and buy the right amount of ingredients. If more people join for dinner than you expected, you'll run out of food! But if fewer people show up, then you'll have leftovers that go to waste. And on top of it all, you have to do all the cooking, set up, and cl"See full answer

Tian H. - "to add! health assistant! remind me to do physical check, aggregate my health info including sleep, physic check results. ...."See full answer

BriskD - "I watched a couple of videos like this, one of them by Exponent staff (I think). It was disappointing that the architecture diagram and the walkthrough was a general layered architecture that you can apply to any backend system. I was wondering if there are videos that can be considered a reference material to watch, learn and improve on the tech (sys design) skills, and not so much about the soft skills."See full answer

Alice S. - "Clarify understanding of the problem space. What does success look like? How is it measured? Platform specific? Market specific? Time period? Business goals? Then perform a funnel analysis to understand user journey and look for problems or opportunities. Choose a user segment to focus on. Identify different user segments and prioritise one. Summarise the goal of the user and the friction point. Brainstorm solutions. Come up with a number of rough solutions. Balance the business n"See full answer

Vivek S. - "This question can be answered in two different ways: a. Strategic b. Product Sense Since , the question is which product you would work upon , it is likely a product strategy question , where interviewer is trying to find about how would you go about selecting the product to solve for. Another approach would be to clarify on the two approaches from the Interviewer. Can ask your hierarchy in PM role [ APM/PM/ Sr. PM / GPM ] and then approach this. Candidate : Do you have any specific goal"See full answer

Sam - "Disagreement --> persistent ---> more data insights ---> positive relationship ---> mentor/trust"See full answer

Jay C. - "How would you monetize messenger? Clarifying Questions Is this messenger app or web? INTERVIEWER: Assume both are a possibility, but feel free to pick one Is there a larger facebook goal or metric we are optimizing for? INTERVIEWER: Monetization speaks to revenue so assume goal is to increase revenue for Facebook as a whole Does this include messenger Rooms or should we stick to the traditional FB messenger? INTERVIEWER: _Messenger rooms is a great call out, but let's stick"See full answer

Anonymous Sparrow - "Clarifying question: why would Google consider sunsetting Gmail? Is there an opportunity to make a case against sunsetting or has the executive decision already been made and we're truly looking for a flawless sunset? If decision has already been made - why? Is this a global decision or country-specific? If the answer from interviewer is that the decision is open to debate, pivot case toward identifying the problem that causes leadership to even consider sunset. Then analyze and propose ways to"See full answer

Karthik M. - "1. Step 1: clarify Let's establish the mission of Google and Youtube. Google's is to provide and make information more accessible. Youtube's might be to help people get their content, their word and themselves out into the world. I mean so many of Youtube's ads have been about how the diversity of individuals and their content, so that makes sense. Let's establish what is Youtube. Youtube has 3 primary stakeholders - creators, viewers and brands/corporations and within them"See full answer

P K. - "Assuming this is meant to be a standalone product. Its a standalone app. Goal: Simplify the shopping experience in store for a user. Success would be defined in terms of app usage as a proxy for user satisfaction. I want to think about the a given user segment, their pain points, ways to improve their pain and a way to evaluate those solutions. Broadly user personas associated with grocery shopping are - stores and customers. For the purpose of this interview I want to focus on customer se"See full answer

Nathan B. - "There are many good answers to this that AI scientists around the world, I and my coworkers have tried over the years. For one, RAG is a great option to fact-check and enforce citation generation, update the data in the knowledge base of the generative AI, etc. "See full answer

Julien C. - "👇 Your feedback is very much appreciated 👇 👁️ Vision Empower artists to earn a living through their art while connecting millions of fans to exceptional music experiences. A live streaming feature can humanize the digital experience, making the platform not only a place to stream recorded music but also a stage for real-time, authentic artist-fan interactions. Enhance Spotify’s artist-first narrative by providing a unique way for artists to monetize their performances. Leverage Spot"See full answer

Prateek G. - "I will first start with listing down the GOALS of Google Sheets as a product GOALS: Enable better collaboration amongst employees in an organisation Make edits parallel Share with co-workers so that the team can work seamlessly Increase user engagement, activity and make more users aware about the functionality and usefulness of Google Sheets Next, i will try and list the broader ACTIONS a user might take ACTIONS: Create a new Google Sheet Share with co-workers M"See full answer

Sumeet R. - "Clarifying Questions: Assume US Audience or Worldwide? US Only Assume short form content or long form content ? Assume all Premium or Ads Support ? All Solution: US Population 300M Will remove 70 ages as not relevant audience or not have access to YouTube = 60m Leaving 240M. Adoption of YouTube with remaining Population = 60% (including overlap and exclusion with other services e.g. Netflix) Total Audience that watches YouTube daily = 144m (about half of US Populat"See full answer

Issac K. - "I learned that people and teams build great products, not processes and job descriptions. The quality of the teamwork will directly reflect in the quality of the product. My biggest failure as a product manager was failing to build a foundation of teamwork before starting a project with a new cross-functional team. As the PM of a new product, I like to get my engineers involved early and often in the design process, but tight schedules with an even tighter resources made the tension and st"See full answer

Anjali V. - "I feel this is more about "Describe a time when I failed or struggled" rather than "Project Failure"."See full answer

S R. - "For RAG systems, You need to evaluate the retrieval and generation. Typically, you have golden truth question and answers as evaluation data set. For retrieval, check if the retrieved contexts are relevant for the question For generation evaluation, You check the semantic similarity between the golden truth and RAG generated answer. Apart from this, you can evaluate the output using frameworks like RAGAS where the answers generated are evaluated based on completeness, faithfulness, to"See full answer