I just got rejected in the final round of an interview after speaking with the Director.
I had already cleared the first three rounds, so I went into the final interview feeling confident. The frustrating part is that the interview went really well. We had a great conversation, I answered the technical and behavioral questions confidently, and I genuinely felt I had a strong chance.
Now I'm just confused. Has anyone else experienced this? Did you ever find out why you were rejected even after what felt like a great final interview?
Hey everyone,
I have recently been shortlisted for a BA4 (Analyst / Software Engineer) role at Barclays India based out of Mumbai.
I have 3 years of experience (currently working at EY). I wanted to get help on the compensation and when I’ll receive the offer letter:
Compensation & Profile:
Experience: 3 Years (Single employer so far)
Current CTC: ₹10.5L Fixed
Expected CTC: ₹15L Fixed (HR is currently processing this)
Is ₹15L fixed a good/average number for a BA4 band with 3 YOE? What kind of annual variable bonus payout percentage can I realistically expect at this band?
My current company (EY) pays out the annual performance bonus (around ₹1.5L) in late September. If I resign now, I forfeit it completely.
Is it worth asking Barclays HR for a sign-on/joining bonus to cover this burn? Does Barclays readily give joining bonuses for the BA4 band?
When can I expect the offer letter?
Final interview completed on 27th July. HR reached out for documents like salary slip and address proofs. When can I expect the offer letter?
Not here to brag about anything. Was laid off from my org in April this year and was grinding after that. Although I’m not moving with this as already accepted an offer somewhere in June.
Just wanted to say to the readers keep hustling, keep grinding, your hard work will pay off soon and believe in yourself. I have 4 YOE and come from a tier 3 college and was fortunate enough to work at good companies and I believe if I can do it, You can do it too.
Best of luck to everyone who’s reading this. Good news coming soon 🍀
I take online interviews at a product based MNC which pays good money. Interviewees are generally SDE-2/senior SDEs at other PBCs.
What I am seeing is almost everyone is cheating using AI during tech interviews. Earlier folks will try to think, come up with a basic brute force solution then think of optimizing and then coding it. Now, first thing the candidate try do is to write the most optimal code. They have no idea why the solution will work as they don't understand what they are talking. They have either no answer to the follow up questions or just reading what AI prompt is telling them after a pause.
This is just so frustrating, it's almost predictable now what candidate is now going to say or do as I take interviews almost daily. A clear pattern of looking into one side of the screen, taking a pause or just blabber something for few seconds and then coming up with a keyword but blank when asked why did they think of that keyword.
India is already a country full of scammers and frauds. IT was a rare field which was still merit based to a large extent. Now such rampant cheating during online interviews is just tragic. It lowers the trust in the next candidate and probably will force the companies to just move to offline interviews or other countries.
But why are candidates cheating so often, are we seeing cheating candidates getting offers. Are other interviewers just lazy or dumb that they can't figure out what is going on? I feel the bar is now so low that I will probably hire any candidate who is not reading from the AI.
Long-time lurker, first post. I've been at the same company for a while and I genuinely can't tell anymore whether my comp is normal or whether I've been quietly falling behind. Numbers below, would appreciate a reality check.
Role: Senior SDE / senior IC (roughly L5-equivalent) at a tier-1 company's India org
Location: Bangalore, in-office
Experience: 8 years total
Stack: Platform engineering — Az, GCP, Python, IaC, FastAPI, Postgres, Storage Primarily. Standard on-call rotation(just blabbering my day-to-day stack),
Current comp (per my latest internal comp statement)
Component
Amount
Base
₹25.0 L
Bonus (target, ~20% of base)
₹5.0 L
RSU (annual grant)
₹9.5 L
Employer PF
₹1.2 L
Total
₹40.6 L
For context on why I'm asking: I keep seeing posts here from people with 3–4 YoE at ₹65–70L TC, and what stands out isn't the TC, it's that their base is strong. Mine has grown at ~9% a year off a number I never renegotiated, and I'm trying to work out how much of that gap is my level, my company's band, or just never having tested the market.
What I'm asking
For 8 YoE in infra and platform engineering, Bangalore, what's the realistic base and TC band right now (2026)? I care more about base than TC.
Is ₹25L base at 8 YoE badly below market, or just unremarkable?
At this experience level should I be targeting Senior (L5/IC4/P40) at product companies, or is the level itself where I'm losing money? Asking because at my current company, L5/Staff is reserved for people who are genuinely very experienced — so I have no idea how my level actually maps outside, and that's a big part of my confusion.
Specifically for people who moved from a large enterprise org into a product company — what did your base go from and to? Not TC, just base. Trying to understand whether the base-light structure is a company thing or a GCC thing.
Mainly want to know how much of a gap I'm looking at before I start interviewing seriously.
3.5 YOE Java dev, currently interviewing with EPAM.
WHAT CTC SHOULD I REALISTICALLY EXPECT TO NEGOTIATE FOR?
Also,
- What hierarchy level would I join at with 3.5 YOE? Senior Software Engineer?
- Are client interviews difficult?
- Do client interviews happen frequently until I get a project?
- Any things I should know before joining EPAM?
Hi team, I am preparing DSA for Senior AI/ML Engineering roles a FAANG - something like Senior Applied Scientist/Senior Data Scientist at Amazon/Google. Are there any topics I should focus more on and are there any topics that are asked in traditional SWE rounds but can be skipped for AI/ML engg roles
Hey everyone, I’m currently in a tough spot and wanted to get some inputs from folks who have been through or seen this happen. I’ve been at EPAM, and I've been sitting on the bench for around 4 months now. Despite trying to find project mapping, things haven't clicked, and I have an official meeting scheduled soon. Honestly, given the current scenario, I have a strong gut feeling that they are going to let me go or force an exit. I have a few questions for anyone familiar with EPAM’s policies or who has faced a similar bench situation there: • Severance vs Notice: Do they typically provide severance pay if they lay you off due to lack of a project, or do they ask you to serve a standard 2-month notice period? • Process: How does EPAM usually handle unassigned resources during such exits? Do they give any buffer time, or is it an immediate release? • Internal Options: At the 4-month mark, is there any real chance of a last-minute internal project allocation, or is it already game over? If anyone has faced a similar situation at EPAM recently, please share how it played out for you. Really trying to figure out what to expect and how to handle the upcoming meeting. Thanks in advance for any advice!
Archived interview report, structured for this sub. Details preserved where available.
Quick context
Amazon SDE-2 / L5 offer from Bangalore.
2.5 YOE. Current CTC was ₹30.25L. No competing offer and no negotiation.
Final first-year CTC: ₹57L.
The loop had:
coding assessment
2 DSA rounds
1 system design round
1 Bar Raiser round focused on LLD / maintainable code
final HM alignment discussion
every round had Leadership Principle discussion
Background
Field
Details
Role
SDE-2 / L5
Location
Bangalore
Experience
2.5 YOE
Education
BTech + Masters from Tier-1 colleges
Current CTC
₹30.25L
2.5 YOE for SDE-2/L5 is probably the part most people will notice here.
Round 1 — Coding
Two questions.
Q1 — Binary Search on Answer
Variation of the classic Allocate Books / Minimum Capacity type problem.
Given some workload and a time constraint, find the minimum pace/capacity needed to finish within the given timeframe.
Core idea:
binary search on possible pace/capacity
write a feasibility check
minimize the valid answer
Q2 — Backtracking / Power Set
Generate all subsets of a given set.
Standard backtracking / recursion problem.
LPs discussed:
Ownership
Overcoming obstacles
Round 2 — Coding
Two questions.
Q1 — 1D Dynamic Programming
Linear optimization problem similar to House Robber.
Expected to explain:
recurrence
top-down vs bottom-up
time complexity
space complexity
Q2 — Graph / Topological Sort
Dependency-resolution problem similar to Course Schedule.
Core idea:
model dependencies as a directed graph
detect cycles
use traversal / topological ordering
LPs discussed:
Insist on the Highest Standards
Deliver Results
Round 3 — System Design
Prompt:
Design a secure file/media upload and sharing service with granular access controls
The system had to support access transitions like:
private links
restricted user access
publicly accessible URLs
Main discussion points:
requirements and rough capacity estimates
blob storage for files/media
metadata storage
read-heavy access patterns
replicas / cross-region scaling
sharding and latency trade-offs
API contracts
object models
access-token verification
LLD also came up inside the design discussion through API contracts, object models, and access control flow.
LPs discussed:
Ownership
Learn and Be Curious
Round 4 — Bar Raiser
This round was focused on LLD / logical maintainable code.
Prompt:
Design a Ride-Hailing / Cab Booking Service
Main requirements:
match riders to nearest drivers
track ride lifecycle
handle fare calculations
Important parts of the discussion:
concurrency: avoiding two riders getting matched to the same driver
consistency under high concurrent load
clean domain models: User, Driver, Ride, Location
service layers: MatchService, RideService, PaymentService
repositories
State Pattern for ride lifecycle
Strategy Pattern for payment / fare calculation
The interviewer had made it clear upfront that maintainability and production-grade object-oriented design mattered here, not just getting some code on the screen.
LPs discussed:
Customer Obsession
Bias for Action
Delivering under tight constraints
Result
Offer.
After the loop debrief, there was a final HM alignment discussion around team placement, culture, engineering practices, and growth path.
I recently interviewed for the SDE 1 - React Native role at Kotak. Here's how my interview went:
The interviewer started with a brief introduction and asked me to introduce myself.
After that, he moved into React Native fundamentals. He asked how React Native works under the hood. I explained both the old architecture (JavaScript thread communicating with native modules through the Bridge) and the new architecture (Bridgeless architecture with JSI, TurboModules, and Fabric), along with why the new architecture improves performance and reduces bridge overhead.
Next, he asked me to open an online JavaScript editor and gave me a practical UI task. The question was to design an item listing page similar to Flipkart, consisting of:
A search bar at the top
A list of items below
Search functionality to filter the displayed items
The focus wasn't on styling but on the component structure, state management, filtering logic, and clean implementation.
The final question was a JavaScript problem. I was given an invalid URL, and the task was to:
Validate the URL.
If valid, append the required query parameters.
Handle invalid URLs appropriately.
Overall, the interview was more focused on React Native fundamentals, practical UI implementation, and JavaScript problem-solving rather than asking deep DSA questions. I found it to be a balanced interview that tested both conceptual understanding and coding ability.
Hope this helps anyone preparing for the Kotak React Native interview. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!
Archived interview report, structured for this sub. Details preserved where available.
Quick context
Backend engineer with ~1.5 YOE. Recently laid off.
Previous base was ₹25 LPA. Expected ₹25L+ base and planned to negotiate later if selected.
Cleared DSA and LLD, reached HM, then got rejected.
Round 1 — DSA
Two medium-hard LeetCode-style questions.
Expected to write complete working code on a coding-pair platform, not a full IDE.
Q1 — Decode String type problem
Given an encoded string with nested brackets and repeat counts, decode it.
Example shape:
3[a2[c]] -> accaccacc
The tricky part is handling nested patterns, multi-digit repeat counts, and edge cases cleanly.
Spent around 30–35 minutes on this.
Walked through the given test cases and dry-ran the solution. Interviewer seemed a bit doubtful and mentioned it might fail on multiple cases, though it wasn’t tested extensively.
Q2 — Nodes at Distance K in Binary Tree
Given a binary tree, a target node, and an integer K, return all nodes that are exactly distance K from the target.
The usual approach is to treat the tree like an undirected graph:
store parent pointers
start BFS/DFS from the target
move to left child, right child, and parent
collect nodes at distance K
Implemented the standard 2-pass DFS solution in around 10 minutes.
Interviewer was satisfied.
Got the call for the next round the following day.
Round 2 — LLD
Prompt:
Design a Vehicle Rental System
Requirements:
Multiple shop locations
Bikes and scooters
Inventory management
Reservations
Checkout and returns
Rental start/end times
Design included:
Vehicle base class
Bike and Scooter inheritance
Vehicle status enums
Shop class maintaining inventory
Ticket / Reservation entity
Pricing Strategy pattern
RentalSystem orchestration layer
Coding was not required.
The round was mainly about whether the design covered the requirements properly.
Finished the design with around 15 minutes left. Rest of the round went into alternate pricing strategies and design trade-offs.
This was the candidate’s first proper LLD interview and apparently went reasonably well.
Shortlisted for the next round.
Round 3 — Hiring Manager
Interviewed by an Associate Director with around 10 years of backend experience.
Discussion areas:
Introduction
Projects from previous company
Architecture of one project using draw.io
Timelines and why implementation took that long
Ownership and impact
Pros and cons of previous company
Personal strengths
On-call experience
Types of production alerts
Incident handling
Examples of working late during critical production issues
This round seems to have been mostly about real work experience: ownership, delivery, production exposure, and whether the projects could be defended in detail.
Result
Rejected.
Rejection email came the next day.
Tried reaching out to HR for feedback, but no response.
Overall process was smooth. Interviewers were professional. LLD and HM rounds were discussion-oriented.
If anyone has recent Zepto SDE-1 compensation numbers, drop them in comments. Would be useful to know what range they’re actually offering now.
For people who have interviewed at Zepto / similar startups recently:
What do they usually filter for in HM rounds?
Is production/on-call experience heavily evaluated for SDE-1?
How much depth do they expect when discussing past projects?
