This drive was for the purpose of hiring Software Engineer for their R&D Team.They mentioned “You will start working from day one!”-They meant that unlike other bulk recruiters which first recruit freshers as trainees and then put them to work after some months of training,Alpha Cloud Labs will give training for only 1-2weeks and let the employees to contribute to the company. First Round(Written): The question paper pattern was similar to Valued Epistemics which was also a start-up.Anyway here it goes. 1.Write code/algorithm/pseudocode for the given problem. There are some unfriendly numbers and a friendly number. Input: It should consist of 2 lines.First line contains two numbers N and K.N represents the number of unfriendly numbers and K is the friendly number. Second line consists of N unfiendly numbers. Some constraints were given eg. i/p: 8 16 2 3 4 3 5 8 7 14 o/p: 1 Problem explanation: First we generate the factors of the friendly number-16 in this case.They are 1,2,4,8,16. 1 divides all the unfriendly numbers, 2 divides 2,4 divides 4, 8 divides 8.But 16 does not divide any number.So the output is 1.We have to write code to implement this. 2. a) What is EC2. b) Give examples of 2 web servers,2 application servers and 2 DB servers. c) Where do we use MapReduce and how? d)What is NOSQL DB? Explain it with an example. e)(I forgot this question) f)What is Semantic Web? g)What is Big data? 3. a)mention a situation in which u had to face a problem with a friend/project mate and how u resolved it b) name a goal which u missed to achieve and how u reacted. c) Name a risky decision which u took and how u turned it as positive 4.A company uses Semantic Docs which uses a server which connects 50 concurrent users.The users can store their documents,music and other files on the server and view them wen they wish to.It also gives PDF files password protection and some other features.Now the company wants to provide this service to the entire world for 500 million users.Suggest the architecture with explanation and diagram 5(Out-of-the box thinking) a) There are 10 baskets.There are 2 kinds of marbles-one is 1gm and other is 2gms.All the baskets contain 1gm marbles except one basket which contains only 2gm marbles.U are given a weighing machine.U can use it only once and have to find the basket containing the 2 gram marbles. b) 1,2,3,10,12,13,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,__ c) There is a switch board containing 3 switches in one room.At the other side of the room there are 3 bulbs.We should find which switch is connected to which bulb in just one trial. d)A security guard asks a question to each person and lets him in if he says the answer.A man spies this and observes the questions of the security guard and the answers by various people. When the question is 12-answer is 6 When 6, answer is 3 When 8,answer is 5 When the question is 4,What will be my answer???? 6.An person gets frequent complaints about the passages in his newspaper that they are very verbose.he wants to optimize them.The optimization should be based on i)No. of words in a passage ii)Frequency of the words iii)No of words in a sentence Write an algorithm for optimization.U can use other third party libraries and also some other open souce libraries if known. (Do not consider . to mark end of a sentence always.eg .”Mr.john has an idea”) Second Round-Technical Interview: They called me for interview on 17th July 2012 in their office. The following questions were asked Tell me about yourself. Some questions on my final year project. What is Cloud computing? What is difference between procedural and object oriented programming? What is thread synchronization? What is CORBA in Java? How will you interrupt a thread? Difference between HashTable and HashMap Some questions on mysql Latest version of java and the new features added? Advantages in Linux OS? Did u use hadoop before?