It wasn't until I walked in at 9AM, I came to know that it was a startup. Manoj, who was our super senior at Mission R&D, came forth and introduced himself. He enquired about our interests. During the discussion, we told that we did not have our breakfast. He then gave us about twenty minutes to have it. After we're done with the it and came back to the office, they asked us to take our laptops out. That is when it began.
We were all given a problem. Just one problem and forty minutes of time to solve it. The problem statement goes like this. Given a number, n representing the number of bits, find the number of the possible binary strings of length n, such that there are no consecutive ones. At Mission R&D, they expect us to write our own test cases and not rely on online platforms.
A small logic struck my mind and I had a lead. However, I wrote the brute force code and put it safe incase things don't work out. I started solving it on paper and after about 20 minutes, I was able to derive a formula that would solve it O(1) time. It was good until I found out that it was failing in a lot of test cases. Then I was stuck with it. One of the students solved it. A while later, we were offered a hint saying, in a program to find the factorial of a number n, we need the value of the factorial of n - 1. Shivam, who had been practicing problem solving for a while, got the solution within ten minutes. His approach was correct and accepted so he was allowed to code it.
Just when I thought that I have no option but to submit a brute force solution, I printed the result of the brute force function for ranges 2 to 20 and found a pattern. It was just fibonacci series. Time was up by then. The other students asked for a break before the second round started. Meanwhile, I took the mentor's permission and wrote the code for fibonacci series in two minutes.
After the break, we were all called into a separate room. The founder spoke to us for a while and handed the session over to Manoj. This is the problem statement for round two. The task is to build a website wherein there are online classrooms. Students can login and request for a classroom while teachers can accept or decline the requests. Teachers can create or delete classrooms as well. The UI was also described. We were told that we're free to use the internet plus any frameworks that we'd like. Either we could work on beautifying the front end using frameworks like ReactJS or design and build a robust backend to handle the data.
However, there was one limitation. We are not allowed to use any databases. The only storage space we had is the localStorage offered by HTML which can be accessed using JavaScript. We were introduced to it saying that it works like a key-value pair. The syntaxes were also given.
localStorage.setItem(key_string, value_string)
localStorage.getItem(key_string) => value
Then, we were told about how to parse and serialise JSON objects.
JSON.parse(JSON_string) => JSON Object
JSON.stringify(JSON_object) => JSON String
Fortunately, before I even left the room, the idea struck my mind. Simulate RDBMS tables using JSON objects and store them using localStorage. Though, it would be better to simulate a NoSQL database using JSON files, I wasn't that good with NoSQL. Additionally, the startup isn't looking for NoSQL skills. Instead, they wanted to see how quickly we can pickup something new and get things done using the new things.
Unlike my experience while solving the problem, I developed this application gradually. We were offered lunch at their place itself. We took a break for a while and got back to working. A while after working I got know that I was at a much better phase in the given task compared to others. This encouraged me a little more.
At about 4PM when Manoj wanted to take a look at my progress. Though it wasn't complete, he said I was doing good and he wanted to take a look at the code. My obsession to write clean code while naming the variables properly and decomposing the task to different functions gave me an edge over the other students. As I was working on the task, one of the students were called in by the founder. Later we got to know that it was a casual talk. Then Manoj took him to a separate room wherein he was interviewed. Meanwhile, I was called by the founder. I went in only to realise that it was the HR round. It went all good and in the end, he asked me whether I am willing to work on the backend or front end. I said backend and justified it by mentioning my work regarding the given task. I was then introduced to Yeswanth, the backend team lead working at AccelQ.
Yeswanth took me to a separate place and asked me questions on my approach for the given task. He then asked, given an opportunity to design a database, explain all the tables I would create. My design went like this.
Teacher (tid, name, . . .)
Student (sid, name, . . .)
Classroom (cid, name, . . . , tid)
Requested (sid, cid)
Enrolled (sid, cid)
Post (pid, title, description, . . . , cid)
He asked questions on my design and I answered them. In places where he showed flaws in my design, I was able to give him reasons why it would work this way. I don't say the design is perfect but it is fairly simple to understand and discuss given that I am under interview pressure. He then asked me some queries and wrote them and he was contented. We spoke for a while regarding all the projects that I've done and then he said it's done.
We walked out and he asked me whether I solved the problem given in the morning or not. I said yes, and he called me inside, again. I was asked to explain my approach which I did. I told him on how I arrived to the fibonacci series. He then told me to think in another manner and hinted recursion. In about thirty seconds, I came up with a recursive solution to the problem. He was satisfied and I was let go.
Three days later, Shivam came upto me during the lunch break and told me I got selected.
Just when I thought that I have no option but to submit a brute force solution, I printed the result of the brute force function for ranges 2 to 20 and found a pattern. It was just fibonacci series. Time was up by then. The other students asked for a break before the second round started. Meanwhile, I took the mentor's permission and wrote the code for fibonacci series in two minutes.
After the break, we were all called into a separate room. The founder spoke to us for a while and handed the session over to Manoj. This is the problem statement for round two. The task is to build a website wherein there are online classrooms. Students can login and request for a classroom while teachers can accept or decline the requests. Teachers can create or delete classrooms as well. The UI was also described. We were told that we're free to use the internet plus any frameworks that we'd like. Either we could work on beautifying the front end using frameworks like ReactJS or design and build a robust backend to handle the data.
However, there was one limitation. We are not allowed to use any databases. The only storage space we had is the localStorage offered by HTML which can be accessed using JavaScript. We were introduced to it saying that it works like a key-value pair. The syntaxes were also given.
localStorage.setItem(key_string, value_string)
localStorage.getItem(key_string) => value
Then, we were told about how to parse and serialise JSON objects.
JSON.parse(JSON_string) => JSON Object
JSON.stringify(JSON_object) => JSON String
Fortunately, before I even left the room, the idea struck my mind. Simulate RDBMS tables using JSON objects and store them using localStorage. Though, it would be better to simulate a NoSQL database using JSON files, I wasn't that good with NoSQL. Additionally, the startup isn't looking for NoSQL skills. Instead, they wanted to see how quickly we can pickup something new and get things done using the new things.
Unlike my experience while solving the problem, I developed this application gradually. We were offered lunch at their place itself. We took a break for a while and got back to working. A while after working I got know that I was at a much better phase in the given task compared to others. This encouraged me a little more.
At about 4PM when Manoj wanted to take a look at my progress. Though it wasn't complete, he said I was doing good and he wanted to take a look at the code. My obsession to write clean code while naming the variables properly and decomposing the task to different functions gave me an edge over the other students. As I was working on the task, one of the students were called in by the founder. Later we got to know that it was a casual talk. Then Manoj took him to a separate room wherein he was interviewed. Meanwhile, I was called by the founder. I went in only to realise that it was the HR round. It went all good and in the end, he asked me whether I am willing to work on the backend or front end. I said backend and justified it by mentioning my work regarding the given task. I was then introduced to Yeswanth, the backend team lead working at AccelQ.
Yeswanth took me to a separate place and asked me questions on my approach for the given task. He then asked, given an opportunity to design a database, explain all the tables I would create. My design went like this.
Teacher (tid, name, . . .)
Student (sid, name, . . .)
Classroom (cid, name, . . . , tid)
Requested (sid, cid)
Enrolled (sid, cid)
Post (pid, title, description, . . . , cid)
He asked questions on my design and I answered them. In places where he showed flaws in my design, I was able to give him reasons why it would work this way. I don't say the design is perfect but it is fairly simple to understand and discuss given that I am under interview pressure. He then asked me some queries and wrote them and he was contented. We spoke for a while regarding all the projects that I've done and then he said it's done.
We walked out and he asked me whether I solved the problem given in the morning or not. I said yes, and he called me inside, again. I was asked to explain my approach which I did. I told him on how I arrived to the fibonacci series. He then told me to think in another manner and hinted recursion. In about thirty seconds, I came up with a recursive solution to the problem. He was satisfied and I was let go.
Three days later, Shivam came upto me during the lunch break and told me I got selected.
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