Samsung Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The round consisted of 3 questions of medium difficulty to be completed in 60 minutes.

Q1. 
Minimum Insertions to Make a Palindrome
Given a string STR of length N composed of lowercase English letters, your task is to determine the minimum number of characters that need to be added to make the s...read more
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Q2. 
Cousins of a Given Node in a Binary Tree
Given a binary tree with 'N' nodes and a specific node in this tree, you need to determine and return a sorted list of the values of the node's cousins. The cousin...read more
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Q3. 
Move All Negative Numbers To Beginning
Rearrange a given array 'ARR' with 'N' integers so that all negative numbers appear before all positive numbers.
Follow Up:
Can you solve this in O(1) auxiliary sp...read more
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Round duration - 40 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

One interviewer asked the same question to two of us.
Both of us could qualify if we solved it correctly.

Q1. 
Convert Binary Tree to Mirror Tree
Convert a given binary tree into its mirror tree, where the left and right children of all non-leaf nodes are interchanged.
Input:
An integer ‘T’ denoting the number o...read more
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Round duration - 180 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

In this round, you have to do a coding question on Samsung Coding Platform, which was installed earlier on our lab's system by the company guys. There is only a single question and time limit is of 3 hrs. There are 50 test cases, and you have to pass all the test cases in order to get selected for next round. Also you cannot use any inbuilt library and you have to implement everything from scratch (like stack, queue, hashmap, etc). You can test your code on sample test cases multiple times but the submission limit in only 5, to test the hidden test cases.
Note : Even passing 49 test cases will lead to rejection.

Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

There were two questions based on data structures and algorithms and some discussion on the Projects mentioned in resume (Major Project based on Arduino - It's programming and its functionality) .

Q1. 
Rain Water Trapping Problem Statement
Given an array/list ARR of size N, representing an elevation map where each element ARR[i] denotes the elevation of the i-th bar. Your task is to calculate and print ...read more
Ans. 
Firstly tried using Brute force approach.
Then I was asked to optimize the space complexity and do it in O(1) space comlpexity.
Was able to code on paper in time.
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Q2. 
Implement a Stack using Queues
Create a Stack data structure designed specifically to store integer data using two queues.
Explanation:
You need to implement a stack using two internal queues. You can u...read more
Ans. 
It was a pretty straightforward question.
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Q3. 
Implement a Stack Using Two Queues
You are tasked with implementing a Stack data structure specifically designed to store integer data using two Queues. Utilize the inbuilt Queue for this purpose.
Functio...read more
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It was a pretty straightforward question.
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

There were two coding questions and I had to write the code on paper. 
After that there was a discussion on OOPS concepts like polymorphism and Inheritance.
The interviewer also discussed about padding concept in structures (Indirectly via an example).

Q1. 
Maximum Gold Collection from Gold Mine
Imagine a gold mine represented by a 2D matrix with dimensions 'N' by 'M', where 'N' is the number of rows and 'M' is the number of columns. Each cell in this matrix...read more
Ans. 
1. Create a 2-D matrix goldTable[][]) of the same as given matrix mat[][].

2. Amount of gold is positive, so we would like to cover maximum cells of maximum values under given constraints.
In every move, we move one step toward right side. So we always end up in last column. If we are at the last column, then we are unable to move right.

3. If we are at the first row or last column, then we are unable to move right-up so ...read more
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Q2. 
Rod Cutting Problem Statement
Given a rod of length 'N' units, you can cut the rod into different sizes, each with a specific cost associated. The task is to determine the maximum obtainable cost by cutti...read more
Ans. 
First I tried to solve using recursive approach by considering all the possible combinations. Interviewer asked to optimize the solution as the time complexity was exponential.
I observed that we can store the previous answers in an array. Thus I was able to solve the problem using an extra array using dynamic programming concept. I was asked to write the optimized code on paper.
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Round duration - 15 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Interviewer was friendly. He asked why Samsung, are you comfortable relocating to Bangalore. Also asked about my experience in previous rounds.