OYO Interview Experience - SDE (2019)
Question Details
Round 1 The first round was hosted on HackerEarth. The test had 2 coding questions and 20 MCQ questions on technical stuff.There were 4 different types of coding question...
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Round 1 The first round was hosted on HackerEarth. The test had 2 coding questions and 20 MCQ questions on technical stuff. There were 4 different types of coding questions, out of which each student had to solve two. Minimum cost to reach the end of a grid. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/min-cost-path-dp-6/ Balloon burst problem. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/burst-balloon-to-maximize-coins/ Replace 'O' with 'X', if it is surrounded by 'X'. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/given-matrix-o-x-replace-o-x-surrounded-x/ Scooby has a habit of sleeping in some periods. You are given two arrays: one containing the number of chapters taught for each period and an array containing flags whether scooby sleeps (shown by 0) in that period or not(shown by 1). Your job is to find the period in which you give one scooby-snack to scooby, which is effective for 'K' periods such that he covers the maximum chapters. For example: chapters covered in each period is [2, 3, 5, 3, 5, 4] and flags for sleep are [1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0]. That is, scooby is asleep for third, fifth and sixth period. The effectiveness for scooby-snack is 3 periods. The maximum number of chapters covered will be when you give it to scooby in 3rd period. Number of chapters covered would be : (2 + 3 + 5 + 3 + 5) = 18 In case you give it in 4th period, the chapters would be: (2 + 3 + 3 + 5 + 4) = 17 The MCQs covered technical topics like DBMS, OS, OOPs and Data Structures.
Note: Anyone who solved atleast one of the two coding questions, was qualified for
next round. (22 out of 40 passed)
Round 2 F2F interview You are given a binary tree with some modifications: a) For any node with exactly one child, the pointer to the absent child points itself. (Say if a node has just left child, then the pointer to the right child points to itself and vice versa). b) For a leaf node, if there exists a leaf to the right of it (in context to the whole binary tree), then the right child pointer of the leaf node, points to that right leaf, otherwise points to itself. c) For a leaf node, if there exists a leaf to the left of it (in context to the whole binary tree), then the left child pointer of the leaf node, points to that left leaf, otherwise points to itself. The task was to give the preorder traversal for the binary tree (at the time it was not modified). For the example given, the traversal should be: 1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9 As you can see from the right-hand side figure, the leaves of the Binary Tree make a doubly linked list. Using that property, this question is solved. That is if (current->right)->left = current or (current->left)->right = current, then the node is a leaf. This would solve the question in O(n)
time complexity in O(1) space.
NOTE: The interviewer asked me to code this on paper. 2. Finding the number of perfect squares between two given numbers. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/find-number-perfect-squares-two-given-numbers/ 3. Given a number, find the square root without any in-built function. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/square-root-of-an-integer/ (9 out of 22 passed)
Round 3 F2F Interview The interviewer was young and friendly. The first question was "Tell me about yourself." Then started the
technical interview https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/find-the-row-with-maximum-number-1s/ Questions on Mutex, Semaphore, Virtual memory vs. RAM A variant of Rotten Oranges question: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/minimum-time-required-so-that-all-oranges-become-rotten/
NOTE: (The interviewer asked me to code the 3rd question on paper) I got selected after this round, but few students had to give another round. In the end, 5 out of 9 were selected for the job. Thanks to GFG archives from where I prepared for the interviews.
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This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Oyo Rooms. 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 Oyo Rooms are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Oyo Rooms 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 Oyo Rooms reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Oyo Rooms 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 Oyo Rooms 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.