PayPal Full Stack Developer Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

I applied thorough LinkedIn and got a call from HR for the interview.
I went to their Noida Office.
First round was mainly focused on Javascript fundamentals.
Interviewer was also friendly.

Round duration - 1 hour
Round difficulty - Medium

Second round was after 15 minutes of the first round. The focus of this round was DS & Algorithms.

Q1. 
Find Subarray with Given Sum
Given an array ARR of N integers and an integer S, determine if there exists a subarray (of positive length) within the given array such that the sum of its elements equals S....read more
Ans. 
Given an array and a target sum, find a subarray that sums up to the target sum.
• Iterate through the array while keeping track of the running sum and the starting index of the subarray.

• Use a hashmap to store the running sum and its corresponding index.

• If the running sum - target sum is found in the hashmap, it means a subarray with the target sum exists.

• Return the starting and ending indices of the subarray or [-1, -1]
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Q2. 
Minimum Number of Platforms Required
You are provided with two arrays, AT and DT, representing the arrival and departure times of all trains arriving at a railway station.
Your task is to determine the m...read more
Ans. 
This question asks to find the minimum number of platforms required at a railway station so that no train needs to wait.
• Sort the arrival and departure times arrays in ascending order.

• Initialize a variable 'platforms' to 1 and 'maxPlatforms' to 1.

• Iterate through the arrival and departure times arrays simultaneously.

• If the current arrival time is less than or equal to the current departure time, increment 'platforms'.

• If ...read more
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Q1. What JavaScript questions did he ask you during the managerial round, and can you describe the work culture of his team?
Ans. 
The interviewer asked about JavaScript questions and the work culture of the team during the managerial round.
• JavaScript questions related to closures, prototypes, event handling, and asynchronous programming may have been asked.

• Work culture may involve collaboration, innovation, agile methodologies, and continuous learning.

• Examples of work culture could include regular team meetings, code reviews, hackathons, and ment
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Round duration - 15 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

1hr aptitude + coding

Asked to write an in memory SQL database. Time was 1.5 hours. I made the mistake of choosing C++ and writing the code to make it very flexible and extensible. This led to me not being able to complete the task in the given time.
Tip: practice LLD round in a high level language like Python or Typescript. Speed is very important.

Round duration - 90 mins
Round difficulty - Hard

There were questions related to DP and DFS.

 

Q1. 
Trapping Rain Water Problem Statement
You are given a long type array/list ARR of size N, representing an elevation map. The value ARR[i] denotes the elevation of the ith bar. Your task is to determine th...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the total amount of rainwater that can be trapped between given elevations in an array.
• Iterate through the array and calculate the maximum height on the left and right of each bar.

• Calculate the amount of water that can be trapped at each bar by taking the minimum of the maximum heights on the left and right.

• Sum up the trapped water at each bar to get the total trapped water for the entire array.
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Round duration - 60 mins
Round difficulty - Medium

At first, I was asked about the different projects that I have done so far. We had a detailed discussion on the same.
He also checked my OOP concepts

Q1. Can you describe the process of designing an LRU Cache from scratch during your System Design Round?
Ans. 
Designing an LRU Cache involves implementing a data structure that stores a fixed number of items and removes the least recently used item when full.
• Start by defining the data structure for the cache, typically using a combination of a hashmap and a doubly linked list.

• Implement methods for getting and setting key-value pairs in the cache.

• When a new item is added to the cache, check if it exceeds the maximum capacity. I...read more
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Q2. 
Reverse Linked List Problem Statement
Given a Singly Linked List of integers, your task is to reverse the Linked List by altering the links between the nodes.
Input:
The first line of input is an intege...read more
Ans. 
Reverse a singly linked list by altering the links between nodes.
• Iterate through the linked list and reverse the links between nodes

• Use three pointers to keep track of the current, previous, and next nodes

• Update the links between nodes to reverse the list

• Return the head of the reversed linked list
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Q3. 
Middle of a Linked List
You are given the head node of a singly linked list. Your task is to return a pointer pointing to the middle of the linked list.
If there is an odd number of elements, return the ...read more
Ans. 
Return the middle element of a singly linked list, or the one farther from the head if there are even elements.
• Traverse the linked list with two pointers, one moving twice as fast as the other

• When the fast pointer reaches the end, the slow pointer will be at the middle

• If there are even elements, return the one that is farther from the head node

• Handle edge cases like linked list of size 1 or empty list
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Round duration - 60 mins
Round difficulty - Medium

It is HR + Technical round
asked about the Behavioural questions and how you justify yourself in an argument .questions related to current technology.
They gave me feedback on how well I had performed so far and gave me suggestions on what more can I do to further improve myself.