My experiments with placements!

Ebay and musigma

2010-11-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

Then came ebay. It offered placements to 4 and interns to many (dono exactly). Ebay written is damn easy to clear( apti is very easy and technical (java n dbms) was ok) . But make sure that u manage to be in the top. They don't really consider who r at the bottom of the shortlist. The interview will focus on java and oops. They asked me the difference between aggregation and composition. Then they asked basics in java( about access specifiers, main method, etc) . They want programming examples! Few had qns from java collections ( hashmap, treemap, etc). Then there was a data structure qn regarding depth first, breadth first traversal. One of my friends was asked about time complexities of sorting algorithms.

Next one was mu sigma. This time it was so easy to clear the written. There were 20 qns to be solved in 20 minutes. It contained 10 agarwal apti, 5 logical and 5 data interpretation. The cut off was pretty low. It was just 7 and so around 188 were shortlisted. The second round was GD. I screwed it :( Make sure that u talk confidently. The final round is HR. Around 25 got the offer.

Netapp and commvault

2010-11-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

Netapp came next. Later I found one thing. The question papers of goldman, netapp and deshaw were all prepared by same recruitment firm on behalf of these companies. Many questions were repeating and those questions can be found in GATE book by G. K publications. Few qns which I could remember.

1. A system has 3 processes. Each needs 2 units of resources. The maximum number of resources that have to be present to avoid deadlock is....

ans: 4

2. which memory models are best suited for which programs?

i) cached m/y best suited for small loops

ii) interleaved m/y best suited for small loops

iii) interleaved m/y best suited for large sequential code

iv) cached memory is best suited for large sequential code

a) i) and ii) are true

b) i) and iii) are true

c) iv) and ii) are true

d) iv) and iii) are true

ans: b)

3. 2 Consider the following relation schema pertaining to a students database:

Student (rollno, name, address)
Enroll (rollno, courseno, coursename)
where the primary keys are shown underlined. The number of tuples in the Student and Enroll tables are 120 and 8 respectively. What are the maximum and minimum number of tuples that can be present in (Student * Enroll), where ‘*’denotes natural join?
A) 8, 8
B) 120, 8
C) 960, 8
D) 960, 120
Answer : (C)

I couldn't clear the written. From what I heard from my friends, they asked some of them to write codes ( for progs like finding the height of a binary tree). For others, they asked puzzles.

They took 2 from CSE and 1 from IT.

Commvault came next. It was a resume-based shortlist. The criteria for getting shortlisted still remains a mystery. I was unfortunate not to get shortlisted for written. They asked C, C++, OS and DS mainly. In interview, qns were mainly from C++. If u have read C++ primer thoroughly u can get through, I suppose. I am allergic to C++ :P

Around 3 got the offer.

Goldman sachs - my first interview :)

2010-11-05T07:09:00.000-07:00

Then came Goldman sachs. I din't have any hope to clear the written. But the written was pretty ok. It had a section of apti, a technical section, 2 algorithmic questions and an essay (why Goldman sachs?) .

Reading agarwal is good enough to do well in the apti section. The technical was also quite easy.

There were 2 algorithmic questions.

1. Write an algorithm to find angle between minute and hour hands of a clock.

2. There are 100000 numbers being generated randomly. U have to sort them. But u have only 2000 bytes of memory.

For the first time, I cleared the written test. Somehow I cleared the GD too since the topic was very apt for me (influence of social networking sites on today's youth).

I was interviewed by Mr.Himanshu. The round was a project round. I had to explain my DBMS project. He made me draw the tables we designed for the database project. Then asked few basic qns about client/server architechture , diff between primary key and unique key, etc. I was doing well. Then he asked me if v had used any process model for the project. I did a great blunder by saying that we din't deliberately use any process model, but that somehow fit into water fall model. He commented that students of today are not giving importance to sw engg and not following process models. Thats it. I knew that I would'nt be qualifying for the next round.. Yet, he said that I am a good database designer :P

The others had technical and HR interviews. Finally 3 from CSE and 2 or 3 from other depts got the offer...

Deshaw and thoughtworks

2010-11-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

Deshaw was the first company to come to our college. Since I had a cgpa above 8.5, I was allowed to sit for all the companies that were open to CSE. I wrote my first written test and it was a very bad beginning. One had to answer 20 apti qns in 20 mins, 20 technical qns in 20 mins and then a program too in another 20 mins. If u expected Agarwal apti qns for Deshaw written, you would be highly disappointed.

I still remember the programming question. It was like, n number of players play tennis against each other and the one who wins most number of matches is the winner. The following are the constraints.

1. There are only 4 tennis courts.

2. A player can play only 1 match per day.

The first line of output should contain the no. of days the tournament would be held.

Then it should contain the day and the matches that are being played on that day, like,

day 1: p1 vs p2, p3 vs p4

day 2: p2 vs p3, p1 vs p4

and so on...

I couldn't clear the written round itself :(

They don't shortlist more ppl for interviews. Only around 10 got shortlisted for the interviews. What I heard was, they were questioned deeply in basics in the interviews... Only 2 from MSc SW engg got the offer.

The second company to come to college was thoughtworks. They say that its quite easy to clear thoughtworks written round. Actually the questions would be simple if only u interpreted the instructions properly. In thoughtworks, they will give u flowcharts and instructions follow them. U have to carefully follow the instructions and trace the flow chart. It may go into several iterations and u r finished if u go wrong even in one place. One particular instruction confused me. It was instruction number 8 i suppose which said, change the instruction number 5 to something. What one is supposed to do is just change the instruction and leave it. I changed the instruction and performed the operation in the changed instruction also. That was wrong. We r supposed to perform the operation specified in the changed the instruction during the next iteration only... So, I din't qualify for the coding round. Coding round was a mystery. Even those who showed output weren't selected for the next round. What I heard was that one needs to bring in many oops concepts in the code. One must obey whatever they say. They would ask u to modify the program. If so, u have to change it! Just follow whatever they say and u r through to the next round. Then there were 2 rounds of technical interviews and finally they took only 1 from CSE and 3 from other depts! :|

What? Why?

2010-10-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone will be wondering what this blog is all about and why I am writing(typing) it now...

In one way I am similar to Ghajini who succeeded after 17 invasions. But the difference is that I succeeded in my 13th attempt itself. Yes, after being knocked out in the interviews of 12 companies, finally here I am - placed in Intel :)

Let me start with this famous quote of Churchill: "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy". You will find the relevance of this quote to placements in days to come...