Technical Round 1: (1 hr )
We started with our introductions, Interviewer was a senior developer at Harness with 5 years of Experience.
He directly jumped on the problem-solving part.
- I discussed the approach and then he asked me to code it.
- I coded it on my personal IDE and explained the logic simultaneously.
- Then I showed by searching for some key and edge cases. He seemed to be satisfied with it.
- Then he asked me for time and space complexity analysis. I already gave the most optimized solution. So, we jumped to the next problem.
DSA problem 2: https://leetcode.com/discuss/study-guide/1886481/minimum-time-taken-to-burn-the-binary-tree-from-a-node
I was not very well prepared for the trees. So, I took 3-4 mins and said that I was not comfortable with trees and asked politely if he could ask some other problem.
The interviewer was kind, so he gave me another problem.
DSA problem 3: https://leetcode.com/problems/paint-house/description/
I first discussed the recursive approach to solving the problem and then showed how it contains overlapping problems and would be optimized using DP.
- He seemed to be satisfied with it and asked to code for it.
- I thought to write a recursive solution first and then come up with a Memoization.
- To my surprise, I was not able to come up with the recursive function properly – which took another 15-20 mins.
- After that, he said that since running out of time, he needed to conclude the interview and asked if I had any questions.
- I wasn’t sure if he would select me as I was not able to code 2nd problem. After half an hour, HR cancelled my second interview.
Overall Experience: The interviewer was a kind person and helped me by giving the necessary hints.
Tip: Don’t directly code the optimized problem, as it would depict that you already know how to solve it. I made a mistake by giving a directly optimized solution for the first problem, the interviewer thought to raise the level of questions.
Verdict: Reject
Harness Interview Experience For Software Engineer 2024
Previous Position – Software Engineer II
Previous Organisation – Sabre
Location – Bengaluru, India
Years of Experience – 1.5 years of Experience