Bounteous x Accolite Software Developer Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

21 students were shortlisted from the 1st MCQ round and in this round we were asked to write the codes (function only) of 3 questions in 1 hour time.

Q1. 
Rotting Oranges Problem Statement
You are given a grid containing oranges where each cell of the grid can contain one of the three integer values:
• 0 - representing an empty cell
• 1 - representing a fre...read more
Ans. 
BFS can be used here. 

Algorithm: 
1. Create an empty queue Q. 
1. Find all rotten oranges and enqueue them to Q. Also, enqueue a delimiter to indicate the beginning of the next time frame.
2. Run a loop While Q is not empty
3. Do following while delimiter in Q is not reached
2. Dequeue an orange from the queue, rot all adjacent oranges. While rotting the adjacent, make sure that the time frame is incremented ...read more
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Q2. 
Majority Element Problem Statement
Given an array/list 'ARR' consisting of 'N' integers, your task is to find the majority element in the array. If there is no majority element present, return -1.
Exampl...read more
Ans. 
The brute force algorithm iterates over the array, and then iterates again for each number to count its occurrences. As soon as a number is found to have appeared more than any other can possibly have appeared, return it.
• Time complexity : O(n^2)
• Space complexity : O(1)

The efficient approach is to use Moore’s Voting Algorithm. 
Approach: 
This is a two-step process : 
• The first step gives the element th...read more
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Q3. 
Maximum Path Sum Between Two Leaves Problem Description
You are provided with a non-empty binary tree in which each node contains a non-negative integer value. Your task is to find and return the maximum ...read more
Ans. 
One approach would be to traverse the tree and for every traversed node X :
1) Find maximum sum from leaf to root in left subtree of X 
2) Find maximum sum from leaf to root in right subtree of X. 
3) Add the above two calculated values and X->data and compare the sum with the maximum value obtained so far and update the maximum value. 
4) Return the maximum value.

The time complexity of above solution is ...read more
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was a technical round with DSA based questions.

Q1. 
N-th Node From The End Problem Statement
You are given a Singly Linked List of integers. The task is to find the N-th node from the end of the list.
Example:
Input:
If the given list is (1 -> -2 -&g...read more
Ans. 
A direct approach is to traverse the entire linked list and calculate its length. Traverse the list again and return the (length-N+1) node. But this approach involves two traversals of the linked list. 
To further optimize the solution, the question can be solved in one traversal only. Two pointers can be used here. Steps :
1. Initialize both the slow pointer and the fast pointer to the head node.
2. First, move fast...read more
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Q2. 
LCA of Binary Tree Problem Statement
You are given a binary tree consisting of distinct integers and two nodes, X and Y. Your task is to find and return the Lowest Common Ancestor (LCA) of these two nodes...read more
Ans. 
The recursive approach is to traverse the tree in a depth-first manner. The moment you encounter either of the nodes node1 or node2, return the node. The least common ancestor would then be the node for which both the subtree recursions return a non-NULL node. It can also be the node which itself is one of node1 or node2 and for which one of the subtree recursions returns that particular node.
Pseudo code :
LowestCommonA...read more
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Q3. 
Reverse Words in a String: Problem Statement
You are given a string of length N. Your task is to reverse the string word by word. The input may contain multiple spaces between words and may have leading o...read more
Ans. 
Steps :
1. Initially, reverse the individual words of the given string one by one. 
2. Reverse the whole string from start to end to get the desired output
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Technical Interview round with questions based on DSA

Q1. 
Minimum Time To Solve The Problems
Given 'N' subjects, each containing a certain number of problems, and 'K' friends, assign subjects to friends such that each subject goes to exactly one friend, maintain...read more
Ans. 
Steps : 
1. Sort the given array in decreasing order of destination. 
2. Create groups of K (starting from the highest floor), the cost for each group will be 2 * (max(Elements in current group)). 
3. The summation across all groups will be the answer.
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Q2. What is grammar in the context of compiler design?
Ans. 
It is a finite set of formal rules for generating syntactically correct sentences or meaningful correct sentences.
Constitute Of Grammar :
Grammar is basically composed of two basic elements –
Terminal Symbols –
Terminal symbols are those which are the components of the sentences generated using a grammar and are represented using small case letter like a, b, c etc.
Non-Terminal Symbols –
Non-Terminal Symbols are those symbo...read more
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Q3. What is a token in compiler design?
Ans. 
Token is the smallest unit in a ‘C’ program. It is each and every word and punctuation that you come across in your C program. The compiler breaks a program into the smallest possible units (Tokens) and proceeds to the various stages of the compilation.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Technical round with questions on DSA and Compiler Design mainly. He told me that you’ll be having your final HR round in some time. I knew that I was going well because he seemed to be quite satisfied with my answers.

Q1. 
Sum Root to Leaf Numbers
You are given an arbitrary binary tree consisting of N nodes, each associated with an integer value from 1 to 9. Each root-to-leaf path can be considered a number formed by concat...read more
Ans. 
This can be solved using recursion. The basic idea is to subtract the value of current node from sum until it reaches a leaf node and the subtraction equals 0, then we know that we got a hit. Keep checking for left or right child path sum equal to target sum – value at current node. 
Time complexity : o(n)
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Q2. What is a regular language?
Ans. 
Regular Languages : A language is regular if it can be expressed in terms of regular expression.
An expression is regular if:
ɸ is a regular expression for regular language ɸ.
ɛ is a regular expression for regular language {ɛ}.
If a ∈ Σ (Σ represents the input alphabet), a is regular expression with language {a}.
If a and b are regular expression, a + b is also a regular expression with language {a,b}.
If a and b are regular...read more
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Q3. What are NP and NP-Hard problems?
Ans. 
NP Problem: 
The NP problems set of problems whose solutions are hard to find but easy to verify and are solved by Non-Deterministic Machine in polynomial time. 
NP-Hard Problem: 
A Problem X is NP-Hard if there is an NP-Complete problem Y, such that Y is reducible to X in polynomial time. NP-Hard problems are as hard as NP-Complete problems. NP-Hard Problem need not be in NP class.
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

That was the round for which I’ve been waiting for hours 
She was very friendly and nice to talk to. It didn’t seem that I was talking to the HR. It was more like talking to a friend. Finally we discussed about the pay-scale and work culture in Accolite.