Benchling Onsite Software Engineer Interview Experience on Screen and VO Topics

Screen Geography questions: cache eviction algorithm, follow-up optimization -> heap (not asked to implement). VO: 1. DNA matching debug two errors, geography was already provided. Then asked to write

Screen Geography questions: cache eviction algorithm, follow-up optimization -> heap (not asked to implement). VO: 1. DNA matching debug two errors, geography was already provided. Then asked to write a wild card matching. I didn't fully understand the original code, wasting a lot of time. 2. Notebook data model design, feedback indicated I answered well. Text (font, bold, italic...) Table (supports formulas, e.g., C3 = SUM(B1: B10)) Multimedia links, this was relatively simple. For example, videos, images, URLs, other pages. Version control: How to implement version control? (I answered with a combination of full version snapshots and diffs). How to reduce storage space when multiple versions have the same content? I answered that the version content is converted to binary, then hashed, and persisted in a key-value store. Hashed key -> text_uri, using the URI corresponding to this key to retrieve the text from the blob. The next day I was notified that the first two rounds were failed, and the rest were cancelled. The people were all quite nice, mostly graduates of prestigious universities, and seemed quite intelligent.