Hi, I have a first round hackerrank interview coming up for Bloomberg for Senior Software Engineer. Any idea how to prep for it? Is it team specific? Would appreciate any help I can get. It’s for NYC. TC: 130 Yoe 4 #engineering #software #swe #interview
Does the job of SSE different from that of SWE?
SSE here is to lead the projects, and drive it end to end, so there are lots of PM like stuff and cross team communication required. Normally, after 2-3 years, a SWE becomes SSE automatically
Thanks for clearing that :)
Correction: SSE to Senior Software Engineer. More context: it’s my first round and is gonna be using hackerrank
Someone already gave a good response of what the interview is like. the only thing id also add is think about algorithms/solutions that have to scale. And by scale I mean expect the interviewer to add on that all of the data cannot fit in memory or on one machine. So get comfortable with providing solutions where your input might come in via stream or where you have different nodes all working on the same problem. after providing the basic solutions for each problem, every single one of my interviewers always progressed to making the input on the scale of 100s of millions or billions and asked how I'd amend/enhance my solution
Make sure you look at some OOP/design based leetcodes. Could be tagged for the company iirc
I practiced blind 75 and a lot of company tagged questions. I interviewed and passed SSE before tech layoffs happened. The bar seems much higher now and heard getting the optimal solution isn’t enough. I would emphasize having strong communication and giving super clear explanations. Also, when you talk about projects, focus on ones that had complexity and challenges.
This.
Do they reject if you need a hint or made a bug now?
Mine was pretty straightforward, but my system design was far, far easier than I prepared for. It was more like a generic algo question
Did leetcode prepping help you? I did the tagged questions but Im also working on general concepts and other questions. What resources would you recommend for system design
What SD question was asked?
Just like a FAANG interview. Expect each round to have 2 leetcode easy/mediums or 1 hard. System design will be standard types of questions. You interview for specific teams but the process is standard. The bar is pretty high. If you get an offer, I’d expect 200-300k range at 4YOE.
That’s solid description. Even that TC seems so low compared with FANNG, but it’s common here. I have a teammate who has been working here for 10 years and his TC is 260, so you know.
I’m assuming leetcode tagged questions aren’t gonna be enough. What could I be practicing and in what order. It’s first round using hackerrank