PhonePe SDE-1 on-campus — the whole process in about six hours

## Background
The entire process wrapped up in a single day — roughly six hours across four rounds.

## Round-by-round

### Online assessment
Four fairly challenging problems focused on **dynamic programming** and **graphs**. I fully solved one and passed partial test cases on a second.

### Technical round 1
A one-on-one, pen-and-paper style round with two problems in the medium to medium-hard range — one involving prefix/suffix logic, the other a graph problem solvable with **BFS**.

### Technical round 2
Similar format, but the difficulty stepped up again — **dynamic programming** plus another BFS-based problem.

### HR round
The longest round, over an hour, covering:
- A deep dive into a MERN-stack project including backend architecture and data flow
- Core CS subjects, particularly **Operating Systems** (deadlocks, synchronisation) and **DBMS**
- Behavioural questions on leadership experience, why PhonePe specifically, and how I'd approach my first two weeks

## Verdict
**Selected.**