capitalone | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
The interview consisted of an online assessment (OA) with four coding questions. The suggested order for tackling the questions was 1, 2, 4, 3. The third question required the most code to write, but the actual implementation was not particularly difficult.
Technical Questions
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Question 1: Given an array, find the position of the first pair of adjacent numbers where one is odd and the other is even. Return the index of the first number in the pair, or -1 if no such pair exists.
Example: For the array [1, 1, 6], the output is 2 because the adjacent numbers [1, 6] meet the condition. For [1, 1, 1], the output is -1. -
Question 2: Given an array consisting of ‘A’ and ‘P’ and a replacement rate, determine how many rounds are needed to reach the final state based on the following rules:
- If the number of 'P’s at the end of the array is greater than or equal to the replacement rate, remove that many 'P’s from the end.
- If there are any 'A’s in the array, replace the last ‘A’ with ‘P’.
- Otherwise, the final state is reached.
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Question 3: Memory allocation and removal. Given a 1D array (memory) and a 2D array (queries), each query either allocates memory or erases memory based on an ID. This question required a significant amount of coding.
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Question 4: Given an array and an integer (distance), find the two closest numbers in the array such that their distance is at least the given distance. This question was similar to a well-known problem.
Tips & Insights
- It is advisable to start with easier questions to build momentum.
- Pay attention to the details in the problem statements, as they often contain hints about edge cases.