I recently completed the HPE CPP 2025 interview process. There were three rounds: Technical, Managerial, and HR.

In the technical round, there were no real technical questions. They only asked a few basic behavioral questions and some things about what we did in the CPP program. It honestly didn’t feel like a technical evaluation at all.

The managerial round was a bit better. The interviewer seemed more experienced and actually had a technical background. He asked me what excites me most and what I focus on. I said large-scale systems. Then he asked a few general questions about how I would handle certain situations and how I approach problem-solving.

The HR round was straightforward, primarily focused on onboarding and salary details.

My honest opinion: The whole process felt silly and unfair. It looked like they prioritized diversity over actual technical skills. The evaluation didn’t reflect real ability. I know I performed better than some people who got selected, but they seemed to care more about diversity categories than merit.

If you don’t fall under a diversity category, it’s more about luck than skill in this process.

Most importantly, your contributions to the project won't matter in the interview process, as I am the only person who did the whole project, but a person who just wanted to complete and get rid of this project got selected.

My suggestion is that don’t ever involve yourself too much, as that may hurt you more.

Technical:

1. If you get selected and have a competing offer, which one will you choose?

2. Are you planning to pursue higher studies in the future?

3. How is the work divided among team members in your CPP project?

4. Can you give a brief overview of your project?

Managerial:

1. Which topic excites you more: distributed systems or large-scale systems?

2. How would you handle a memory spike issue in a service? (Expected context: use an in-memory database like Redis for caching.)

3. What differences have you noticed between booking a bus seat and a train seat? (Expected: seat selection is not available in train bookings.)

4. Why is seat selection not allowed in train bookings? (Explanation: when seat selection was allowed, passengers preferred corner compartments less, causing uneven weight distribution toward the center of the coach. This shifted the center of mass and led to inefficient braking, as the weight was not evenly distributed near the wheels.)

HR:

1. Are you planning to pursue higher studies in the future?