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    Goldman Sachs Software Developer Interview Questions

    Interviews at Goldman Sachs

    37 Interview Reviews

    Experience

    Experience
    39%
    28%
    33%

    Getting an Interview

    Getting an Interview
    32%
    29%
    15%
    9
    9
    6

    Difficulty

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    Interviews for Top Jobs at Goldman Sachs

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    Helpful (1)  

    Software Developer Interview

    Anonymous Employee in Salt Lake City, UT
    Accepted Offer
    Neutral Experience
    Easy Interview

    Application

    I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (Salt Lake City, UT) in August 2014.

    Interview

    I had several interviews with all branches of the subdivsion, not just the one that I had applied for, and a brief programming/logic test. I received offers from two groups in the subdivision. None of the interviews were terribly difficult--mostly they focused on my project management experience and interest in efficiency/automation. For one branch there was also a brief logic/coding test.

    Interview Questions

    Negotiation

    Negotiation happens BEFORE you get the offer. They toss out a "soft offer", and ask if you WOULD accept. This is the one to negotiate. Once they have prepared an actual offer the window of opportunity to negotiate has closed.

    Other Interview Reviews for Goldman Sachs

    1.  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Austin, TX
      No Offer
      Positive Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (Austin, TX) in October 2014.

      Interview

      2 Thirty minute interviews back to back. The first one consisted of behavioral questions, describing past projects, listing out knowledge that you currently have. The second segment consisted of a more technical interview that only required pseudo code.

      Interview Questions

      • Describe your most challenging problem.   Answer Question
      • Design a calendar app for a busy executive. The app should maximize the value of meetings the executive can have that day. There are three meeting lengths: 30 minutes, 1 hour, and 1 hour and 30 minutes. Meetings can have 3 different values to them: low, medium, and high.   1 Answer

    2. Helpful (4)  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Employee in New York, NY
      Accepted Offer
      Positive Experience
      Easy Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3+ months. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (New York, NY).

      Interview

      Invited to diversity event. At diversity event spoke with multiple senior members of teams and Managing Directors. Then invited to a super day at nj office with multiple teams from different tech divisions. Then another full day in nyc and nj offices after that with the teams that I liked the most. Met with an MD from each tech division I was interested in that day. Each full day had about 8 interviews each. Interviews were generally discussions. Depended on your interviewer what you discussed. Not many coding questions and they were pretty easy. Coding questions were algorithms and recursion. Process is very long during interview phase, but during the interview ask as many questions as you desire. I learned a lot about the company during the interview process (division and team structure - got a whole drawn out picture, expectations, what people do on a day-to-day, where requirements come from, competition, end of year reviews, promotions, bonuses, etc) and everyone was very helpful answering questions. If multiple teams/divisions give you an offer, you get to pick your team/division. That's a nice feature. MDs are very involved and will help you choose the best spot for you even if it's not with their team.

      Interview Questions

      Negotiation

      Negotiation was expected. Was given ample time to determine what I wanted and finish interview processes with other companies.

      3. Join the Goldman Sachs team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3. Helpful (19)  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in New York, NY
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Average Interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (New York, NY) in August 2015.

      Interview

      My friend had referred me to a couple of positions in the company and I soon started getting calls from the HCM team to schedule interviews
      1. One 30 min phone screen with member of team
      2. Onsite interview (1:1 interviews with 5 people) in NY
      3. Have one more tech phone screen scheduled with a senior member of the team <fingers crossed>

      Interview Questions

      • Q. Your strengths and weaknesses
        Q. puzzle - balls, one of different weight. How many tries on a balance scale to find the one ball that weighs more/less
        Q. merge part of merge sort
        Q. which sort is feasible in different situations
        Q. how can you use merge sort for large arrays
        Q. internal working of hashset in Java
        Q. why should you implement equals() and hashcode() for custom objects
        Q. Can you use serialization and deserialization on a Singleton class to break Singleton pattern
        Q. longest increasing sequence in an array of positive integers
        Q. buy and sell stock problem
        Q. Given an array in which every number occurs twice except one number that occurs once, how can you find the number that occurs once?
        Q. Difference between semaphore and mutex
        Q. How can you implement defensive security in a Java application
        Q. What do you know about the kind of work Goldman Sachs does
        Q. code to find if given string is palindrome or not
        Q. Query using SQL self joins - find employee with max salary in each dept
        Q. code to find if given substring is present in a string
        Q. design patterns that i have used
        Q. Questions on projects listed in resume
        Q. your preferred/most proficient programming language
        Q. project or technical requirement where you overcame some difficulty
        Q. what are the different steps that happen when you enter a url in the webbrowser
        Q. difference between browser and OS cache
        Q. what are cookies? what will happen if you delete them   Answer Question

    4.  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No Offer
      Average Interview

      Interview

      The process was very straightforward. You apply at their website and if they get interested in your profile, they will reach you. On the initial document they might ask you a bit about your background and for some docs if something is missing. A few days later, they will contact you again with the date for the interview. Usually they interview is on site and they will flight you if you are in the US, otherwise will conduct the interview via phone.

      Interview Questions

      • The interview was mostly about object oriented programming. A couple of questions about interfaces, templates among others.   Answer Question

    5.  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in New York, NY
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 2+ weeks. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (New York, NY).

      Interview

      Initially telephone screening has been done. It went around 50 mins. They covered Java basics and SQL basics followed by reason for looking change. Later after a week received a call for face to face interview.
      Recruiter told it will be another one or two rounds of technical interviews followed by HR interview. But after reaching there I understood that there will one hour skills test, which test your problem solving skills , Java skills and SQL skills followed by assessment and discussion on your solutions that you provided. I haven't expected that. But I did good in that written test. After discussion went on the solutions that I wrote by two different interviewers separately. Later I have been asked to wait for some time. After 5 mins I got the update that I can leave for the day.

      Interview Questions

      • Time Complexity of a solution that I provided.   1 Answer

    6. Helpful (2)  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Jersey City, NJ
      Declined Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (Jersey City, NJ) in September 2009.

      Interview

      Had interviews with 3 departments and each department had 3 1:1 interviews. 1st would be a technical interview, 2nd be more of a design and behavioral interview and 3rd was with the manager how would tell about the department and would ask technical and behavioral questions.

      Interview Questions

      • Write a program to find the common characters in two strings. After writing the code they asked to reduce the complexity.   1 Answer
      • Design and write a program for change dispenser.   Answer Question
      • write a code to find a subset in an array which has the maximum sum. Array can have both negative and positive numbers.   Answer Question

    7. Helpful (1)  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in New York, NY
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (New York, NY) in June 2009.

      Interview

      After applying online, I got a call from a software developer at Goldman Sachs. He mainly asked about my previous programming experience. He also asked questions about object-oriented design. For example, what is the difference between a class and an object. He then gave some logic questions. He said I had answered the first logic question too quickly - I had seen the concept before. So he gave me another question.

      Interview Questions

      • He also gave the following logic question.

        Suppose you are in a dark room by a table and there are 3 coins on the table but you can't see the coins and you can't tell just by feeling them if the coins are heads or tails. How can you split up the coins so that there are two groups that contain the same number of heads?   1 Answer

    8. Helpful (1)  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in Jersey City, NJ
      No Offer
      Neutral Experience
      Easy Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (Jersey City, NJ) in September 2010.

      Interview

      Phone screen was easy, some basic java questions followed by relatively easy SQL question. The last question was the kind of ridiculous "gotcha" type of question which some interviewers like to ask , akin to the problem they had at one point and it took them a week to figure it out, but they feel compelled to ask you the same question at the phone screen. Got invited to the face to face interview. One of the interviewers was a slimeball I did not answer one question correctly (easy one) , simply because I dont remember all detail of API , the guy kept smiling without correcting me , basically behaving as if I answered it great. Other interviewers were very sceptical about my resume , it felt like I was fake in their eyes, not sure why. My overall impression is that this company does not have morals. By talking to a girl , I realized that there is a real fear of layoffs present in the building, despite current hiring. I wish good luck to a guy who will get this job, instead of me, as I dont think I could work there, even if I got an offer.

      Interview Questions

      • There were no really difficult questions , lots of questions about joins , how to do left joins etc.   Answer Question

    9.  

      Software Developer Interview

      Anonymous Interview Candidate in New York, NY
      No Offer
      Negative Experience
      Difficult Interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 days. I interviewed at Goldman Sachs (New York, NY) in May 2010.

      Interview

      I had a total of 9 interviews held during two days. The interviews were increasing in difficulty as I was progressing and the interviewers were increasing in rank as I was progressing. On the first day, I spoke with a total of five people. The questions were very basic and the people were very nice. I answered the questions well and it was relaxed. The questions were mostly technical, but there was some casual conversation involved. By the end of the day, the last interviewer I spoke with mentioned to me that I have been competing against people with more experience, and that my chances were slim but that my resume stood out and that there was a reason why some of the interviewers pushed my resume.

      On the second day, I had another four interviews. One of my interviewers came in out-of-order and kept looking at his watch throughout the interview. He gave me a ball buster type interview. Another person that came in asked me a simple technical question which I did very well on. In response, they had the next interviewer grill me on a difficult technical question.

      Interview Questions

      • Where do you see yourself in five years?   2 Answers
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