doordash | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
I was invited for an interview by a recruiter a week ago, and I just completed it this week. The interviewer, a gentleman from China, appeared a bit stern in his LinkedIn photo but was quite friendly in person. The interview involved a coding problem where I was given a set of cities/coordinates and asked to return the nearest city that shares either the x or y coordinate. If there were multiple cities at the same distance, I was to select the one with the smaller name alphabetically.
Initially, I described a brute force approach and then optimized it to sort the x/y coordinates. During the query, I used binary search, which is O(log n). After the interview, I found out that this is a well-known problem, but I hadn’t prepared for it. The problem itself wasn’t difficult, just lengthy with many details. I chose to code in Java, and by the end, I had a small bug. The interviewer mentioned that I had a good understanding of the algorithm and complexity, and that the remaining issues were minor. Overall, I felt it was a lenient interview, as the interviewer indicated that grammar issues could be looked up on Google.
After four years without interviewing, I realized that my skills had declined. While I was comfortable with Java and LeetCode problems, it seems that many companies now focus on verbose questions, which might favor Python.
Technical Questions
- Find Nearest Point That Has the Same X or Y Coordinate
Tips & Insights
I noticed that many interviewers I encountered during this job search were around 20 years into their careers. I didn’t feel overly challenged, but the lack of interaction and feedback made me a bit nervous. The questions were not difficult; any failure to write the correct solution was primarily my own fault.