FB Phone screen chances

Amazon
ERbp36

Go to company page Amazon

ERbp36
Jan 8, 2020 8 Comments

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

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TOP 8 Comments
  • Uber
    QuMu56

    Go to company page Uber

    QuMu56
    This is ridiculous. Tech interviewing has jumped the shark
    Jan 8, 2020 1
  • Airbnb
    ando

    Go to company page Airbnb

    ando
    This is a brag. Wait until the on-site before gloating.
    Jan 9, 2020 2
  • Amazon
    KatonπŸ™πŸ”₯

    Go to company page Amazon

    KatonπŸ™πŸ”₯
    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!
    Jan 12, 2020 0
  • 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
    Jan 10, 2020 0
  • Microsoft
    zimmer19

    Go to company page Microsoft

    PRE
    Oracle
    zimmer19
    Any updates OP..
    Apr 23, 2020 0