I applied for a software engineer role through the company's careers page and received a call for an onsite interview the following week. The first round involved writing C programs, compiling, and executing them. The questions were easy, and I could write the code without difficulty. However, the challenge arose because, before writing the code, I needed to explain my intended approach and what tools I would use. Once they agreed with my approach (which often aligned with what they had in mind), they allowed me to write the code.

The interviewer seemed to have prepared specific questions and repeatedly pressed for the exact approach they had learned or previously used.

Furthermore, when asked to write the program, I was given a laptop, and the interviewer continuously stared at the screen as I typed, which made me feel very uncomfortable.

Finally, I wrote the programs well and expected a call for the next round. Instead, I received an email stating I was not a fit for Arista.

I believe the way I was interviewed was incorrect. An interviewer should not expect a job seeker to provide an answer using a specific, predetermined approach. Instead, they should observe if the candidate can think of different ways to solve the problem. I suspect the interviewer might have been new.

Regardless, this was a very bad experience that lowered my confidence. If someone genuinely wants to get an offer from this company, they might not receive one until they face similar interviewers.

Q1) Write a C program to find the missing number in an array of integers which are consecutive and sorted. Array = { 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 }; Missing number is '4'.

Q2) Some basic functions of a Binary Search Tree.