Zomato·SDE 1 · junior
RejectedInterviewer spent nearly the whole hour on project/SQL discussion, rushed a single DSA question at the end, and rejected on output alone
Apr 20240by Anonymous
Hello,
Got the chance to appear for Zomato SDE 1 role. I was told before the interview that I would be asked System design, Data structures and algorithms and many more.
Interview-(Google Meet)
- Started with the introduction.
- Discussion started with my project, discussed about technologies included in it. Answered all questions, interviewer seemed satisfied. Interestingly, majority of my project was based on reactJs, but in the discussion of more than 30 minutes, was not asked a single question about ReactJs.
- Then we moved on to MongoDb, he asked questions about mongoDB, answered them. then we moved to SQL( Expertise of Interviewer), was asked about it, interviewere spent most of the time here only. Could not solve the SQL query as interviewer was expecting ( He decided at this point only ).
- When 1 hour was over, interviewer said let's go to DSA, (only for formality) , asked me a question and told me to do it fast as we did not have time, I used the online whiteboard to tell about the approach, broke the problem down to the tiniest part and explained efficiently, then I said to dry run the approach, but interviewer said directly code the solution, I wrote code for the solution with no errors in the first time, interviewer gave a sample input and simply said what is the output, I told the output, he did not see the code, he did not see the approach and just said incorrect let's wrap up. However the only mistake was that there was a loop running upto (n-1), it was supposed to run till (n).
Things to say to zomato:
- If you are not going to ask about things like system design and dsa then why mention that the interview will be based on it.
- Judging interview on the basis of a single parameter(not dsa, not system design , SQL only) is how much fair.
- If your interviewer could not manage time, what is the mistake of the candidate that they are not given even 10 minutes for DSA.
After all this, the feedback of interviewer was -
- Work on breaking complex problems into smaller ones( however I did break the dsa problem to the tiniest part, he was not even listening)
- Focus on projects tech stack (Could not answer only SQL, which was not even in my project, it was interviewer's expertise, his profile was filled with it).
- Focus on DSA (Dude you did not even ask DSA).
PS-
I am 1800+ on cf
2300+ on lc
5 star on cc
No way anyone would believe that I could not break problem into smaller ones for a medium leetcode question.
Zomato Expected better from you :(
The loop · 1 round
technical
Single round: project/ReactJS+MongoDB+SQL discussion (>1hr), 1 rushed DSA question at the end
Shared Jul 2026