Status: 7+ years of experience, currently working with a mid sized company in Bengaluru.
Position: Software Engineer 3 at Cisco
Location: Bengaluru, KA
Applied directly on Cisco portal and Recruiter contacted me after a month. He asked brief intro about myself and expected compensation and all other basic detail. Then, he shared OA link and asked to complete. That wasn't compulsory I felt as he scheduled 1st technical round at the same time.
I didn't remember exact question from OA, but one medium question from LC and other one was UI question using React.js
Interview Process:
Virtual On-Site Interviews:
Round 1 -> Interview started late and interviewer was busy in some production issue it seems. So, start with brief intro then directly jumped into question. He asked two question one medium and other easy one from LC.
https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-knight-moves/
We had long discussion about approach and code. Then, he asked me to write pseudo code. I was missing one optimization but he was fine at the end and then he asked
https://leetcode.com/problems/search-a-2d-matrix/
I solved it using simple while loop, at the end I also mentioned about additional optimization could be done to achieve in log(n).
Over all, though I solved above questions within time, but felt a gap between what he is expecting and my solution. I felt, he had some other solution in his mind. Anyway, I got call after 4-5 days later for next 2 rounds.
Round 2 -> He was quite experience guy and he mentioned he is been Cisco for last 15 years (more than my entire IT career :D). Anyway, he was nice and supportive and asked easy question to reverse linked list.
https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-linked-list/
Then, he jumped into Java question then moved to multi-threading and then asked to write ODD-EVEN famous question using two thread.
https://leetcode.com/problems/print-zero-even-odd/
I wrote psuedo code for this and explained as well then I also mentioned about object lock behavior. Then, discussion related to multi-threading went on for next 10 mins and he was keep digging my knowledge in multi-threading. Overall, it was good experience.
Round 3 ->This was very straight forward round I ever had :D. He didn't asked to introduce myself (you had already two rounds, no point of asking you again same question to tell about yourself :D). He asked me to code zig-zag binary tree traversal.
https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-zigzag-level-order-traversal/
He expected running code with all edge cases cover. Later, he asked me to modify the code in such a way that, traversal can be controlled by boolean. Let say, if user pass true to you method, then traversal should start from left to right otherwise right to left. I made minor change and code was working. He was happy and asked if I have any question. So, I asked about culture and work/responbility as part of this job.
Round 4 -> Discussion with Manager, this was fitment round. There were many question. I felt, they are very much concern on fitment round. It went around an hour.
The whole interview process took around 15-20 days and got confirmation that they will initiate offer.
I hope this will help someone to prepare for Cisco or any other similar company. Good Luck to everyone preparing for interviews! Hope, I haven't missed anything to add.