I met a Bloomberg recruiter at a career fair. We discussed my resume for five minutes, covering previous work experience, preferred programming languages, and more, before scheduling two technical interviews for the following day.

The first interview was with two very cool individuals from different teams. They asked basic, though sometimes tricky, questions about C and Java, primarily focusing on memory allocation. I was also asked to code a reverse string function and to correct and improve a poorly written piece of C code. The interviewers were not trying to trick me; they guided me towards the correct solutions when I made mistakes.

The second interview began with fundamental questions, such as 'Why Bloomberg?' and 'Why do you want to be a software developer?'. I was then asked to design an algorithm (see below) and implement it in Java. Similar to the first interview, the last fifteen minutes were spent in a very pleasant conversation with the interviewer.

Two days later, I was contacted by an HR manager to schedule an interview. After a ten-minute chat, I received an offer.

Design an algorithm to find the first unique element in an array.

How is memory managed in Java? Explain what the garbage collector is.