INTERVIEW

All the server tech shortlisted interns had to report to CDC at 8:30 AM. We had to wait for quite a long time for the process to go through all the candidates. Finally (I was the last name on the list), my first interview began at 6:30 PM, and it went as follows:

ROUND 1

It began with my basic introduction and a few questions about my resume. The interviewer was very friendly, which helped ease my nerves and allowed me to express myself effectively. I was asked the question: "Remove duplicates from an array of integers." I quickly gave the O(n) time and O(n) space solution using a hashmap. I was given a variation where the input array was sorted, and I optimized the solution to use O(1) space. I was also asked to set the duplicates to -1 and move them to the back of the array. After this, I asked her a few questions about her role at Oracle, and the interview concluded.

ROUND 2

My second round, like the first, began with greetings and my introduction. I was asked about the internship experience mentioned in my resume, and I gave a well-structured and detailed account of it. I was asked questions from my favorite Core CS subject, OOPS, ranging from run-time polymorphism and virtual inheritance to constructors. She then asked me about the different layers of an OS. I was a bit confused but decided to talk about the different components in a layered OS, microkernels, monolithic kernels, and examples of such OSs. I was also asked about the difference between preemptive and non-preemptive kernels and multithreaded programming. She asked me about IP Spoofing, to which I gave a short answer and stated that I hadn't taken a Computer Networks course yet. The interviewer valued my honesty and said she wanted to test my knowledge in areas I had studied. Next, I was asked a series of DBMS questions about SQL Queries, Joins, Transactions, Schedules, and Indexing. Then, I was asked two DSA questions: the first being related to Armstrong numbers, and the second a simple problem of counting the occurrences of vowels and consonants in a string. The interviewer was happy with all my answers, and then I asked her a few questions of my own.

ROUND 3

This interview was the last overall interview of the day, and I went into it feeling quite positive. The interviewer was a senior staff member at OCI Hyderabad who was very intelligent and receptive. He began by asking me how my branch (Computational and Data Science) was different from Computer Science. I gave an elaborate answer where I talked about a joint foundation in Mathematics and CS and how our goal was to learn to weave them together to gain a broader practical background for technical problems. He was quite impressed and remarked that I sounded very confident. He then asked me an implementation question where I had to evaluate an expression of mathematical equations with a large number of edge cases. I came up with a solution using two stacks and assigning a precedence to each possible operator, explaining my thought process every step of the way. He then asked me to write clean and understandable code for the same. After this, he began asking me project questions about the tech stack used and the inspiration behind them. He asked me to explain certain ML algorithms like Naive Bayes Classifier and Support Vector Machines to him, which I did in intricate detail using diagrams to provide visualization to my statements, and examples. This went very well. After which, I asked him questions about his role in the cloud infrastructure team. We discussed a bit about vector databases and how Oracle had incorporated such AI features in their latest database. After a few more questions, Round 3 wrapped up.

Tech stacks used in project