I applied online and received an email for the first round. The first round was coding. I finished coding, but there was a small bug. The interviewer pointed it out. Then there was time left, and he asked me to choose a topic, such as Unix, C++, C, or Data Structures. I selected Unix and C++. He asked a tricky C++ program output question and then went in full depth about why and how it worked, including virtual function internals, printf internals, all the way down to the kernel level. The 1-hour interview went on until 1 hour and 45 minutes. It was the most exhaustive and in-depth interview I've ever had. I enjoyed it.

The interviewer was good; he was from Stanford.

I was then called for an onsite 2-hour interview. I went there. This interviewer was a manager, who started with very tricky C questions and asked me why the output was like that, with full depth. I answered to the best of my knowledge.

He then asked me to design malloc. I did, but he was not satisfied. After 1 hour and 15 minutes, he said I didn't fit the requirements on the face and let me go.

I felt happy to be rejected. There's no point working in a place where people are judged based on such questions and not on technical knowledge. I prefer to spend my time on something that produces useful products.

Tricky C coding questions related to:

• What will be the output of a trick program and why?
• Design malloc.