1 Self-awareness

1.1 Biggest strength and weaknesses

My biggest strength is consistency, it allowed me to pass my matura exams with
a great score which enabled me to go to the university I wanted to go to and I
was able to stick to leetcode for a long time and achieve my goal of getting the
leetcode shirt. On the other hand, sometimes it’s hard for me to start sticking
with something, while if I get focused on something i.e. the shirt I can stick
to it. It’s not always easy for me to start having a habit of doing something,
for example there is an uncountable number of things I wanted to do and have
forgotten about after messing with them for a while.

1.1.1 What do you wish to be better at?

Sometimes it’s hard for me to start sticking with something, while if I get focused
on something, I can stick to it for a long time i.e. learning for the exams I had
at the end of high school or learning algo through leetcode, it’s not always
easy for me to start having a habit of doing something, for example there is an
uncountable number of things I wanted to do and have forgotten about after
messing with them for a while.

1.1.2 What are you most proud of ?

My proudest accomplishment is getting a shirt from leetcode, which is a site
where you can practice problems regarding algorithms. I worked for the goal
my entire high school and a semester of primary school, but it was definitely
worth it and I was satisfied while receiving the shirt. Another fun thing was
winning a hackathon, as a member of a group of 3 people, the time spent was
significantly smaller to achieve this, but the process was really rewarding. The
hackathon’s task was about trying to maximize profits by buying and selling
tesla stocks optimally, not only was it a lot of fun trying to come up with a
solution, but it was also extremely satisfying seeing your work edge out other
submissions live as the simulation was going on.

1.2 Co-workers’ View of You

1.2.1 What would your classmates say about you?
1.2.2 What would we miss if we didn’t hire you?

2 Tell us about yourself

I am an applied computer science student and not by accident. Throughout
the latter half of my life I have been practicing writing algorithms on leetcode,
which was shown to me by my brother-in-law. Then I started exploring spring,
thymeleaf, react, vue, full-stack development in general. Recently, I have read a
book on system design and to me, the way all the interactions between different
services, which make a cohesive system are really satisfying to learn about and
hopefully I’ll be able to apply all that knowledge in practice soon.

3 Why are you interested in this space

(As I said) I really like algorithms, the way they manipulate data and can be
sometimes made really fast by applying certain techniques and that’s what I
think I’d like about working at Splunk, getting data using observability, moni-
toring then manipulating and finally, displaying the information in a way that’s
nice to view for Splunk’s clients.

4 Tell me about a time when you had to over-

come obstacles
5 Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I’d certainly like to get my degree, mature, not only as a software engineer but
also as a person in general. I definitely see myself getting more experience as
a developer, getting to know more people, learning new technologies, whatever
those that are going to be prominent are, although I don’t think that much is
going to change. Also I’d like to attend many events throughout the time I will
study, such as hackathons or algorithms-related contests.
6 The interview
6.1 Introduce yourself. Explaing your background
A 19 years old applied comp-sci student who started learning algorithms early
on, then began exploring the world of full-stack web development, mostly via
spring, thymeleaf, vue. Recently I have been getting more and more interested
in system design and the way complex systems are build from ground-up

6.2 Why did you choose Splunk?

Splunk is data-driven, algorithms are data-driven, I like algos, thus I would like
working at Splunk
I love algorithms, the way they manipulate data and can be made faster using
certain techniques and I think that’s what I like about Splunk. Getting data
from certain systems, manipulating it and displaying in a nice manner to the
end user.

6.3 Tell us about a time you learned a new skill? What

were the steps you have taken? What was the out-
come?
I was trying to create a web-app, and didn’t have much knowledge as to how
they are secured, so I searched the web and was learning about those differ-
ent mechanisms and vulnerabilities that are more apparent when using certain
mechanisms and less apparent with others. I then found out about json web
tokens and was trying to research if using it as a primary authentication mech-
anism would make sense. Then I chose a library, read some parts of its and
spring security’s documentation along with some OWASP pages on prevention
of different types of vulnerabilities and decided to implement what I settled on
at the end which was a combination of refresh token cookies and JWTs. In gen-
eral I think this was a positive experience definitely, not only did I learn a lot,
I also learned about learning and I believe that learning this skill in particular
made me a better researcher.

6.4 Tell us about an assignment that you did partially and

the teacher changed the requirements in a way that
demanded a change of action from you. What did you
do? What was the outcome?
I was once in a situation with my friends at the end of high school, well it was
the third grade. We had to do a project for our comp-sci class. And it included
conducting an interview and writing an article about fin-tech and because it was
a comp-sci project we thought the presentation was the most important thing so
we created a simple static website that included the interview as an embedded
soundcloud widget and also the article including the transcript of the interview.
Then it turned out the teacher added requirements about the presentation and
it was supposed to be a docx file with just the bare article in it. So we copied
it, but the problem was that we thought it lacked content as we were led to
believe the presentation was supposed to be the most important aspect of the
assignment. We then decided it was best to fabricate the one interview and we
pretended to have done 3 more, the assignment stated clearly the interviews
didn’t have to be real so that’s not a problem. Finally, I think the result was
pretty good, I mean the teacher gave us good marks and, all in all, that was
our goal.

6.5 Tell us about a time you heard confusing opinions

from your colleagues. What did you do to resolve
the confussion? What was the outcome?
In primary school, I was on a team responsible for audio on school events and we
didn’t know how to set up the speakers, more specifically should the two speakers
in the middle face the audience or whoever was performing at the event. Most of
us started shouting, so I decided to go to my PE teacher who was the conductor,
or supervisor, of most events. I tried finding him, but ultimately didn’t know
where he was so I went to the principal, and could finally find the teacher and
everything was clarified as to the position of the speakers which were supposed
to be facing the performer. In hindsight the speakers could be adjusted as to
face wherever 2 minutes before the event, but I still think escalating the problem
was the good choice, because we wouldn’t have reached a consensus otherwise.

6.6 What subject were you good at school? What subject

were you bad at school? Why?
I have always been pretty bad at biology history and such, where you have
to memorize a lot of facts and not everything can be logically deduced. And
pretty good at math and physics, because I feel like every piece of information
just logically flows from its predecessors. There are some axioms, definitions,
different types of notations, but rarely are there any theorems you cannot by
yourself with what you previously learned. And this cohesive, closed nature
of these subjects is what I think makes it easier for me to learn these things.
Algebra and math in general - good, polish, biology, history - bad

6.7 How did you come up with your solution to the Jolly
Jumpers problem? What would you have done dif-
ferently if you had more time? What if you had a
teammate?
brute force first, then pigeonhole principle to optimize