Software Engineer Principal Interview Questions

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There were in total 5 rounds. System design, management and values round was face to face and 2 coding rounds were online. I cleared all the face to face rounds with flying colours but coding round was scheduled with Australian team which I don’t think knows how to a collaborative interview. Looks like they have some checklist in mind in which you need to tick all the boxes but they won’t tell you those boxes. So, if you are lucky you might check it all and if you leave any of the box they will come back saying he didn’t do this but the fact of the matter is that this expectation the interviewer never set with you. In the coding round they will give you a problem statement which you need to write a production level code and then they will give a scale up version which you need to incorporate in your code and then they will ask some design decisions which you need to answer. All this has to be done in about 50-55 mins and even if you do all of this correctly they would end up saying “hey he did everything well but you know he didn’t ask clarification question and didn’t propose alternative approach “ . The fact is that you will find the time anyways less for the above part that you will end up just writing code and test cases. Also why I find interviewer lack skills is that even if candidate didn’t ask they themselves could ask and see if candidate can propose things like alternative design but I guess that will hurt their ego. In my case in my first interview I asked lot of clarifying questions and this was only able to do the part 1 of the code and the feedback was he is rusty. So in the second round I solved the part 1 and part 2 of the problem successfully with all test cases and design questions and then the feedback came that he didn’t ask clarifying question. I would recommend getting your interview scheduled from india team as they are very coloborative, if they want you to focus on something they will set the right expectations and in the end judge you on your performance. Australian team will just go through their motion and if you are lucky you might go through. Company wise I believe they are pretty good with set of products they have and also their policies but their interview process for senior positions definitely need a rehaul. Before appearing for coding interview do perform all your rituals because you need all your stars alignment rather than the skill
avatar

Principal Software Engineer

Interviewed at Atlassian

3.2
Dec 9, 2023

There were in total 5 rounds. System design, management and values round was face to face and 2 coding rounds were online. I cleared all the face to face rounds with flying colours but coding round was scheduled with Australian team which I don’t think knows how to a collaborative interview. Looks like they have some checklist in mind in which you need to tick all the boxes but they won’t tell you those boxes. So, if you are lucky you might check it all and if you leave any of the box they will come back saying he didn’t do this but the fact of the matter is that this expectation the interviewer never set with you. In the coding round they will give you a problem statement which you need to write a production level code and then they will give a scale up version which you need to incorporate in your code and then they will ask some design decisions which you need to answer. All this has to be done in about 50-55 mins and even if you do all of this correctly they would end up saying “hey he did everything well but you know he didn’t ask clarification question and didn’t propose alternative approach “ . The fact is that you will find the time anyways less for the above part that you will end up just writing code and test cases. Also why I find interviewer lack skills is that even if candidate didn’t ask they themselves could ask and see if candidate can propose things like alternative design but I guess that will hurt their ego. In my case in my first interview I asked lot of clarifying questions and this was only able to do the part 1 of the code and the feedback was he is rusty. So in the second round I solved the part 1 and part 2 of the problem successfully with all test cases and design questions and then the feedback came that he didn’t ask clarifying question. I would recommend getting your interview scheduled from india team as they are very coloborative, if they want you to focus on something they will set the right expectations and in the end judge you on your performance. Australian team will just go through their motion and if you are lucky you might go through. Company wise I believe they are pretty good with set of products they have and also their policies but their interview process for senior positions definitely need a rehaul. Before appearing for coding interview do perform all your rituals because you need all your stars alignment rather than the skill

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