Flipkart Interview Experience of a Student of DA-IICT

Coding Round

First round was coding round which had two questions on interviewstreet and lasted for 1.5 hrs. Here are the questions:

1. We are required to transport a package using trucks. We are given package size and trucksize (every truck has equal capacity). The package can be repeatedly broken into half i.e 6 cn be broker into 3-3 and 3 can be boker into 1-2. We were required to code a program which could tell the minimum amount of trucks required for given packagesize and trucksize.
2. We are given 4 type of infinite coins. We are given value of each time. We were required to tell whether we can pay someone using these coins.

Machine Round

After coding round 50 students out of approximately 300 were selected. Then we had a 2 hr  machine coding round. In this round, a question on binary tree was given. We were required to code a lot of functionality, like finding least common ancestor etc. Following was the criteria of judging:

1. Compilation of code
2. Number of test cases that it passed
3. Algorithm/Logic
4. Code readability

I felt that the code for the problem was lengthy but was simple. Many panicked after reading the question and functionality that we were required to implement. So for this round I would advise you to code on sites like codechef, codeforces so that you can code your logic well. Also I think practicing from DSA lab questions would help a lot. Main part is to get your code to compile, as they graded only those codes which compiled. Second thing is that it might not be necessary that your code passes all test cases because if your code compiles, passes most of the test cases and if the logic is good, then you can get into the next round. I am stating this because as far as I know, only mine and Shashank Parekh’s code passed all test cases but other 13 people who got selected had their code compiled properly and were able to pass most of the test cases, and most importantly had good logic regarding problems.

Technical PI

In this round one SDE from flipkart conducted the PI. He asked two questions:

1. Zig Zag traversal of tree
2. Data Structure for job scheduling. The jobs had only start time and arrival time. I was able to provide a O(logn) and he seemed happy with it.

HR PI

6 people were selected for this round. An Engineering Manager took our interview. The questions were aimed at testing your personality. The questions were like why flipkart?, state one of thing you have done that you are proud of. Also, in the conversation I mentioned that I liked Digital Image Processing, so he asked me algo to segregate a particular shape. In the end 4 people were selected for the role of SDE.

I felt that process was quite easy as compared to amazon but still coding round and machine coding round tested your ability to code fast. Also, the difficulty level of the questions that were asked in technical PI was random, so if you are good at coding then only you can be sure of making it to flipkart!