VMWare | Staff Engineer | Bangalore, India | May 2021 [REJECT]
Question Details
Recruiter contacted me in first week of May through email.
Round 1 coding round 1) Validate IPV4 2) Kadanes algorithm This round went well except for a small mistake in...
Full Details
Recruiter contacted me in first week of May through email.
Round 1 coding round
1) Validate IPV4
2) Kadanes algorithm
This round went well except for a small mistake in the first question, did not add check for negative values
Round 2 Design round + coding
Lot of discussion on design patterns.
Asked to design Rate limiter.
Coding 1) Write builder pattern example
2) binary search in a array with unknown length
The intervewer did not agree with some explanations initially for design patterns, had to explain every thing in detail. The rate limiter design discussion went really well, discussed trade offs on few approaches and agreed on a solution.
Round 3 with Hiring Manager who is the director for hiring team.
Lot of discussion on my current project and design related questions.
Asked to design Rightsizing system for AWS resources (based on my experience).
This is the best round for me, the discussion was really good. Interviewer appreciated the high level design and DB schema, where I took care of future use cases.
I was suprised to see reject email from HR, waiting for the detailed feedback.
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a vmware interview for a swe role (staff level) during the phone screen round reported in 2021.
It covers the following topics: Arrays, Binary Search, Sql, Oop .
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This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at VMware. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at VMware are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the VMware interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in VMware reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your VMware Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in VMware reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.