would have thought Visa The electric interview is the kind of easy to talk about resume, set a few sentences BQ, the result never expected - the interviewer on the opening of the direct dumping questions, completely do not give me a little buffer time. The whole process down, the rhythm is really tight: coding high-frequency questions must be examined, Java / Python basic knowledge may be named at any time, but also on the project experience to dig deep. The overall feeling is a high-pressure, fast-paced technical assault.
Round 1 Electricity
The interviewer was an Indian guy, and he only exchanged pleasantries and then dictated the topic directly. Because of the heavy accent, I didn't catch it several times, and said "sorry, could you repeat that?" several times in a row, and finally the little brother was a little helpless and said something like "Never mind, let's move on", jumping straight to the next question ...... The whole interview was pushed along at this pace.
Coding Title
Find duplicate in array
Given an array, find the repeated elements in it. follow up is to find the element that occurs most frequently. In fact, the idea of this question is very straightforward, using HashMap can be done, but because of the accent did not hear clearly, stuck half a day.
Find closest node in BST
Classic question, find the closest node to the target in BST. The interviewer asked me to write and talk at the same time, and when I was in the middle of writing, I was interrupted and asked why I was going left/right.
Matrix set zeroes
Given a matrix, if an element is 0, set the entire row and column to 0. The follow up is whether it is possible to do this without using extra space. I started to use extra array to store row/col index, the interviewer nodded, but continued to ask "what if O(1) space?". I didn't get the answer here, and the guy just said "okay, next question".
Longest Increasing Subsequence
I was a bit nervous on the spot, and my writing was quite messy. In the end, I didn't finish it, so I could only tell him about DP's thinking. He nodded and didn't ask too many questions.
Palindrome Substrings
Given a string, return all the substrings of the palindrome. Sort of a giveaway question, nothing difficult.
Maximum Subarray (Kadane's Algorithm)
This question is actually the original question on IC, I've seen it before, but because time was running out, I wrote it halfway through before debugging it, and it was directly called off.
The overall feeling of the interview is: the questions are not too difficult, but the pace is fast, follow up many questions, coupled with the problem of accent, it is very easy to mess up.
Round 2 Electricity
In the second round, there was an Indian lady with a very serious attitude, but her Skype connection was broken twice, which interrupted the rhythm quite a lot. Her process was relatively standard, first digging deep into the resume, then coding + CS foundation.
BQ + Resume Deep Dive
Asked me about projects I've done as an intern and what tools I've used (I mentioned Spark and she followed up with "why Spark over Hadoop?").
Ask about the design thinking in the project, who decided to use this architecture, and what my role is in it.
Also asked for a specific detail: how would I debug if the data pipeline failed.
It felt like she was really looking for depth of understanding of the program, not just going through the motions.
Coding
Implement Queue with Stacks
I wrote the most primitive implementation (two stacks), and she asked me several times about my two while loops, "why did you write it this way" and "what is the complexity of the pop". I thought to myself, "Isn't this LeetCode Easy?", but she just asked me about the details. After writing it, she even asked me to design test cases.
Minimum Window Substring
High-frequency problem. I wrote the idea of double pointer sliding window and thought it was O(n), but she pointed out that "your implementation is actually O(n^2)" and asked me to optimize it. I was stuck here for half a day without an answer, and I could only end up regretting it.
CS Basics
She asked very thorough questions:
HashMap vs Hashtable
Java pass by reference or pass by value
Interface vs Abstract Class
Set vs List
Java Garbage Collection Mechanism
Python's use of pickling
How Java prints a custom class
It's basically checking to see if the CS foundation is solid.
interview experience
The whole interview gave me the impression that:
Coding High Frequency Questions + Follow up Deep Dive
All IC/LeetCode high-frequency questions, but the interviewer will keep pressing for optimization points and can't just write a solution that runs.
The basics are asked in great detail
Especially Java Fundamentals, a lot of them are conceptual questions from the book, but not answering them clearly will look like a shaky foundation.
Projects are about details
It's not just what you've done, but also why you designed it that way and how you solved problems you encountered.
Accent and communication are hard.
The Indian accent was really a bit of a struggle, and a few times I didn't hear it resulting in the rhythm being interrupted.
The overall difficulty is medium, but if the coding is slow or the basics are not well prepared, it is easy to be brushed.
Can't understand the accent, get stuck and swiped?Programhelp I'll show you how easy it is to get Visa.
Many students will encounter similar situations in Visa's e-interviews: they have actually brushed up on the coding questions, but when they are nervous, they write messily and can't finish the debugging; when they are followed up and asked questions, they will be easily stuck; and when they add the problem of the accent, the rhythm will be easily disrupted.
We at Programhelp specialize in helping people solve these pain points:
No Trace Online Assists -- You write the questions at the interview site, and we have real-time voice/remote reminders to avoid breaks in thought.
Question Bank Exercise -- Help you go through the Visa high-frequency questions ahead of time to make sure you don't panic when you hit the field.
Project defense optimization -- Simulated BQs and project deep dives so you can speak clearly and answer confidently.
Don't be a hard-ass. With the help of your older siblings, you can really make a big difference in your interview pass rate.
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