Bloomberg conducts a technical interview for its first round. My experience involved a ~1-hour interview hosted on HackerRank, which also provided audio and video conferencing. The interview was structured as follows:

• 10 minutes: Resume Review This was a stress-free segment focused on discussing the projects and experiences listed on your resume. Be prepared to elaborate on the languages used, data structures implemented, and other technical details.

• 40 minutes: Coding Challenge My challenge was to implement the game Zuma, primarily involving string (or vector) manipulation and recursion. Although I didn't finish the entire implementation, I was close (estimated at ~87%). I wrote pseudocode and discussed with the interviewer how I would complete the remaining parts. All specific details of this challenge can be found in the Interview Questions/Answers section.

• 10 minutes: Candidate Questions I had prepared several questions to understand working at Bloomberg. One aspect the interviewer mentioned, particularly concerning recent challenges, was the difficulty of team communication in a remote setting. He also highlighted design choices as a significant challenge. Contrary to the common perception that actual coding of difficult features is the hardest part, he explained that disagreements within a development team on how to implement a typical feature often occur well before coding begins. When asked about hobbies, he noted that gaming has become more popular due to remote work, which I found interesting.

RESULTS

I received word from Bloomberg about 1.5 weeks after the interview. This first round took place just before the July 4th holiday, so the team was likely in holiday mode. My second round of interviews is scheduled for the last week of July 2020.

Implement the tile-matching puzzle game "Zuma" in the programming language of your choice. The marbles (tiles) are represented by a string, where each letter is a color, e.g., ABCCCBBBCCCBBBAB. One of these letters represents a marble that the player has inserted and is denoted by an index value (e.g., 5 would denote the 6th letter).

The game rules are as follows:

At the spot where the user placed a marble, if there are 3 or more consecutive letters (e.g., BBB), then those letters are erased, generating a new sequence of letters. At the spot where the first set of letters was erased, if there is another instance of 3 or more consecutive letters, those are erased too.