This is a part of my job interviews series.

Background

• Years of Experience: 4.5 years
• Relevant Python experience: 2 years
• Year: August 2016
• Campus:
• Position: Python developer
• Company: Sony India Software

Interview discussions

I have mentioned the main questions and the ladder questions around that question under it.

First phase

1. What are Decorators and why do we use them?
   • Real Python

2. Multiprocessing and Multithreading in Python

   • source: Lei Mao's blog

3. In multiprocessing, discussed parent, child relation concept.

4. How a parent will know that a process's invoker has been killed?
   • SIGCHLD concept in C

5. Differences between __repr__ and __str__ in Python?

   the goal of __repr__ is to be unambiguous and __str__ is to be readable.

   Checkout further good answers on stackoverflow

6. How to implement stack and queue in Python?

   • Stack (LIFO)

     class Stack:
     
     def __init__(self):
        self.stack = []
     
     def pop(self):
        if len(self.stack) < 1:
            return None
        return self.stack.pop()
     
     def push(self, item):
        self.stack.append(item)
     
     def size(self):
        return len(self.stack)
     

   • Queue (FIFO)

     class Queue:
     
     def __init__(self):
        self.queue = []
     
     def enqueue(self, item):
        self.queue.append(item)
     
     def dequeue(self):
        if len(self.queue) < 1:
            return None
        return self.queue.pop(0)
     
     def size(self):
        return len(self.queue)
     

   • reference

7. How does Python interprets?

   • How does Python work
8. How to run a module if I delete its *.py file, but the *.pyc file is present?
   • Yes, we can run the .pyc file directly without *.py file.
9. How does memory management happen in Python?
   • Real python blog on memory management
10. How to know what are the attributes/methods present of a class or object?
    • using dir
11. Have you worked on SQLAlchemy?
12. Write a program to write:
    • 'd' in place of 'a',
    • 'e' in place of 'b', .. .. ..
    • 'a' in place of 'w' with proper unit test cases.

Second phase

Did not qualify. Failed in Unit test writing.

Result

Not qualified

Analysis

What went well

What went well and I should keep doing further:

• The interview discussion went well.
• I was responding calmly with a pause after the question, framing my answer in a structured way with keywords, which the other person want to hear.

Need improvement

What did not go well or I have not planned for and I need to improve:

• I need to improve on live coding. Though the problem was not tough, due to lack of practice on coding when someone is watching you code every letter made me nervous.
• I need to improve my Unit testing skills; learn pytest.

I have appeared in 20+ interviews so far. You can check out my job interview series for the rest of the interviews experiences.

Let me know if you have any further questions. Thank You.