Tesla Backend Engineer Tech Phone Screen Homework Review

This post was last edited by Anonymous on 2025-09-23 23:36. This position was offered by their sourcer; it's for the software group in the production department that monitors battery status within the

This post was last edited by Anonymous on 2025-09-23 23:36. This position was offered by their sourcer; it's for the software group in the production department that monitors battery status within the factory, and they're looking for a backend engineer. After a half-hour chat with the hiring manager, they assigned a homework assignment. The assignment isn't complex: it simulates a robot moving from a starting point to a destination in a room. The room contains various obstacles, tags for changing direction, a jumper, and configuration information for changing obstacles and search direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise). The input must be a so-called room diagram input via stdin, which is an area enclosed by the # character with various symbols in the middle. It's unclear why this input is required; perhaps it's to handle different command-line scenarios. The output is a string representing the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) or printing "loop" to indicate an infinite loop that cannot find an end. The poster failed because several edge cases of loops weren't detected. In fact, the example he provided was flawed; according to the direction rules, it should be an infinite loop, but he provided a result that could be bypassed. So the poster adjusted their search strategy based on that example, presumably bypassing some cases they expected to result in infinite loops. I was initially a little disappointed not to pass this simple assignment. Later, I casually checked the average package size for similar positions in the automotive industry on levels.fyi and found it was comparable to that of Apple, with very low base salaries and RSUs. Suddenly, I felt less regretful about not passing. However, I hope that if anyone is interviewing for this position, they can prepare accordingly. If you've

passed this, please give me some points, thank you.