Had my phone screen with FB today. After a 3-4min brief introduction he asked an LC medium Binary tree root to leaf path sum question. Slightly trickier variant than LC. https://leetcode.com/problems/sum-root-to-leaf-numbers/ There was some back and forth about definition of the question. I told I will use long as output and return error for overflow to which he eventually agreed (lost few min). Coded it, interview nudged me towards simplification (spent 5 min). I answered I would use strings if tree depth was huge. I was hesitant to start wit strings because the arithmetic would take too long to code up. Time complexity I gave was O(N*d) N nodes, d is the number of digits in the number. He diverged into C++ based followup questions, lost couple of mins. 34 -36 min into the interview, he asked me second LC med question and i immediately gave optimal solution in <1min. Then he followed up with the hard variant of that question and I immediately gave the optimal approach in <1min. I wrote the main data structures for my approach i.e. map and vector, wrote code for getrandom. But he cut me of at 42 min and asked me for any questions I had. Also lost a few min coz he had a strong chinese accent and was hard to understand. https://leetcode.com/problems/insert-delete-getrandom-o1/ https://leetcode.com/problems/insert-delete-getrandom-o1-duplicates-allowed/ Main doubts I have:- Whether he perceived the optimal complexity to be different i.e O(Nh) where h is height of tree and that I didn't have time to finish code for the second question
This is a brag. Wait until the on-site before gloating.
Phone screen is supposed to be more lenient as it is hard to get a good idea in 45 mins. Based on your post it looks like you easily pass the bar for phone screen
Wow. Sounds crazy dude... EDIT: I just did those problems you listed. This is how long it took me. They all passed on first attempt Problem 1: 9min Problem 2: 13min Problem 3: 17min = 39 min in total. Not sure if it would be possible to complete them in 45 min especially considering the introductions and small talk and all. There would be a lot of pressure to complete them. UNLESS the interviewer didn't want you to do problem 2 and asked you to just go ahead with problem 3... In that case, the total time is 26 min, which seems a lot more reasonable. I am sorry OP, but it looks like you failed. I hope I am wrong and I wish you the best of luck!
Have you seen the question before Amazon?
Any updates OP..
This is ridiculous. Tech interviewing has jumped the shark
Ikr, this isn’t normal. Tech industry needs a revolution