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CodeKairo

Big Tech Screen — Theory Drill

Not a company's paper. The computer science a Google, Microsoft, Meta or Apple screen assumes you already know.

The pattern and syllabus · 13 sample questions

Not a company patternNo negative markingCS fundamentals

The sitting

1h

total time

50

questions

3

sections

None

negative marking

Start the test

The clock starts as soon as you click. Your paper is drawn fresh, so a second sitting is a different set.

Proctored sitting

  • Laptop or desktop only, with a webcam. Phones and tablets can't start a test.
  • The test runs full screen, with the site's navigation hidden.
  • Your webcam stays on and is checked on your computer — nothing is recorded or uploaded.
  • Leaving full screen, switching tab or window or minimising blurs the paper — and so does the camera seeing no one, someone else, a phone, or you looking away. The clock keeps running.
  • Each is a warning; the third ends the sitting. It is graded so you can review it, but marked disqualified and never counted as your best.
  • Pasting, copying, right-click and printing are off.

The paper

1

Data Structures & Algorithms

20 Q

25 min

Complexity, trade-offs, traversals and the classics.

Data Structures & Algorithms

2

OS, DBMS & Networks

15 Q

18 min

OS, DBMS & Networks

3

Language Semantics

15 Q

17 min

Output prediction in C, Java and Python, plus pseudocode tracing.

Programming Fundamentals · Pseudocode

Before you start

This is not any company's real test, and it is important to be clear about that.

Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Flipkart and Salesforce all screen with coding problems and nothing else. There is no aptitude round, no reasoning section and no multiple-choice paper to reproduce. Anyone selling you a MAANG aptitude mock is selling you a fiction.

What this paper does instead is drill the theory those coding rounds assume: complexity, data structure trade-offs, the operating system and database facts that come up in the interview that follows, and the language semantics that decide whether your solution is correct.

  • Sit the coding rounds themselves in the challenges section, not here. That is where the offer is actually decided.
  • No negative marking, fifty questions in an hour.
AI InterviewGet started

Big Tech Screen — Theory Drill — Free Mock Test

Big Tech Screen — Theory Drill pattern: 50 questions in 60 minutes across 3 sections. Sample questions, a preparation guide and a free timed mock.

  • Pattern: CodeKairo
  • Duration: 60 minutes
  • Questions: 50
  • Timing: Sectional — each section on its own clock
  • Negative marking: None

Not a company's paper. The computer science a Google, Microsoft, Meta or Apple screen assumes you already know.

  • Not a company pattern
  • No negative marking
  • CS fundamentals

Sections

SectionQuestionsTimeKindMarks each
Data Structures & Algorithms2025 minMultiple choice1
OS, DBMS & Networks1518 minMultiple choice1
Language Semantics1517 minMultiple choice1

Big Tech Screen — Theory Drill syllabus

Data Structures & Algorithms

OS, DBMS & Networks

Language Semantics

Instructions

This is not any company's real test, and it is important to be clear about that.

Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Flipkart and Salesforce all screen with coding problems and nothing else. There is no aptitude round, no reasoning section and no multiple-choice paper to reproduce. Anyone selling you a MAANG aptitude mock is selling you a fiction.

What this paper does instead is drill the theory those coding rounds assume: complexity, data structure trade-offs, the operating system and database facts that come up in the interview that follows, and the language semantics that decide whether your solution is correct.

  • Sit the coding rounds themselves in the challenges section, not here. That is where the offer is actually decided.
  • No negative marking, fifty questions in an hour.

How to prepare for this pattern

A theory drill for candidates preparing for the coding screens at Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Flipkart and Salesforce. It is not any company's real test.

What the paper looks like

Three sections, sat in a fixed order: Data Structures & Algorithms, 20 questions in 25 minutes; OS, DBMS & Networks, 15 questions in 18 minutes; and Language Semantics, 15 questions in 17 minutes. That is 50 questions in 60 minutes. Each question is worth one mark, there is no negative marking, and the paper is not adaptive. Each section has its own clock and closes when you leave it. Those companies all screen with coding problems and nothing else: there is no aptitude round, no reasoning section and no multiple-choice paper to reproduce. What this paper drills instead is the theory those coding rounds assume: complexity, data structure trade-offs, the operating system and database facts that come up in the interviews that follow, and the language semantics that decide whether a solution is correct.

How to prepare, section by section

The coding itself is where the offer is decided, so sit it there: the Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Flipkart and Salesforce coding mocks, with the DSA roadmap as the path through the topics.

On the day

The first section gives 75 seconds a question, and the other two roughly 72 and 68. These are recall questions, so answer on sight when you know, reason briefly when you do not, and never leave one blank, since there is no negative marking. Treat the result as a map of gaps: a wrong answer on a complexity or semantics question is a bug you might otherwise write into a coding round, so look up every one you miss afterwards.

This paper is CodeKairo's own and is not modelled on a published pattern, because none of these companies runs a multiple-choice round (Amazon, the one exception, has its own mock); CodeKairo is not affiliated with any of these companies.

Practice questions for the Big Tech Screen — Theory Drill test

Maximum nodes for a given height

A binary tree has height 5, taking the height of a single-node tree to be 0. What is the maximum number of nodes it can contain?

  1. 31
  2. 32
  3. 63
  4. 64
Show the answer

C. 63 Worked solution

Where linear probing lands

Keys are inserted into a hash table of size 10 with h(k) = k mod 10 and linear probing. The keys 12, 22 and 32 are inserted in that order into an empty table. At which index does 32 end up?

  1. 2
  2. 3
  3. 4
  4. 5
Show the answer

C. 4 Worked solution

One partition step

The array [7, 2, 1, 6, 8, 5, 3, 4] is partitioned by the Lomuto scheme with the last element as pivot: a boundary index i starts at −1, every element less than or equal to the pivot advances the boundary and is swapped into it, and the pivot is finally swapped into position i + 1. What is the array after this single partition?

  1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 5, 7, 6
  2. 2, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 7
  3. 2, 3, 1, 4, 8, 5, 7, 6
  4. 2, 1, 3, 4, 8, 5, 7, 6
Show the answer

D. 2, 1, 3, 4, 8, 5, 7, 6 Worked solution

Finding both the minimum and the maximum

What is the minimum number of comparisons needed to find both the smallest and the largest of 100 distinct integers?

  1. 99
  2. 148
  3. 150
  4. 198
Show the answer

B. 148 Worked solution

Structure behind level-order traversal

Which data structure does a level-order (breadth-first) traversal of a binary tree rely on?

  1. A hash table
  2. A min-heap
  3. A queue
  4. A stack
Show the answer

C. A queue Worked solution

Flow control in TCP

Which mechanism does TCP use for flow control — that is, to stop a fast sender from overwhelming a slow receiver?

  1. A leaky-bucket shaper in the network layer
  2. A sliding window whose size the receiver advertises
  3. The slow-start congestion window
  4. The time-to-live field of the IP header
Show the answer

B. A sliding window whose size the receiver advertises Worked solution

Value of a counting semaphore

A counting semaphore is initialised to 10. Six wait (P) operations and four signal (V) operations are then completed on it. What is its value?

  1. 0
  2. 4
  3. 8
  4. 10
Show the answer

C. 8 Worked solution

PRIMARY KEY against UNIQUE

What distinguishes a PRIMARY KEY constraint from a UNIQUE constraint?

  1. A UNIQUE column may hold NULL, a PRIMARY KEY column may not
  2. A PRIMARY KEY column may hold NULL, a UNIQUE column may not
  3. Both allow NULL values freely
  4. Neither allows NULL, and a table may have only one of each
Show the answer

A. A UNIQUE column may hold NULL, a PRIMARY KEY column may not Worked solution

The gap between 3NF and BCNF

A relation R(A, B, C) has the functional dependencies AB → C and C → B. What is the highest normal form R satisfies?

  1. 2NF but not 3NF
  2. 3NF but not BCNF
  3. BCNF but not 4NF
  4. It is not even in 1NF
Show the answer

B. 3NF but not BCNF Worked solution

Three divisions in Python

What does this Python program print?

print(7 // 2, 7 / 2, -7 // 2)
  1. 3 3.5 -3
  2. 3 3.5 -4
  3. 3 3 -4
  4. 3.5 3.5 -3.5
Show the answer

B. 3 3.5 -4 Worked solution

Rotating an array left

The array A is 0-indexed. What are its contents at the end?

Integer A[0..4], i, t
Set A = {10, 20, 30, 40, 50}
Set t = A[0]
For i = 0 to 3
    Set A[i] = A[i + 1]
End For
Set A[4] = t
Print A
  1. 10 20 30 40 50
  2. 20 30 40 50 10
  3. 50 10 20 30 40
  4. 50 40 30 20 10
Show the answer

B. 20 30 40 50 10 Worked solution

A static local variable

What does this C program print?

#include <stdio.h>

void f(void) {
    static int c = 0;
    int d = 0;
    c = c + 1;
    d = d + 1;
    printf("%d%d ", c, d);
}

int main(void) {
    f();
    f();
    f();
    return 0;
}
  1. 11 11 11
  2. 11 21 31
  3. 11 22 33
  4. 13 13 13
Show the answer

B. 11 21 31 Worked solution

What does this routine compute

For positive integers a and b, what does Mystery(a, b) return?

Function Mystery(Integer a, Integer b)
    Integer t
    While b != 0
        Set t = b
        Set b = a MOD b
        Set a = t
    End While
    Return a
End Function
  1. The LCM of a and b
  2. The GCD of a and b
  3. The remainder when a is divided by b
  4. The larger of a and b
Show the answer

B. The GCD of a and b Worked solution

About this pattern

Authored, not reconstructed. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Flipkart and Salesforce were all researched and none runs a non-coding MCQ round, so no paper of theirs exists to model. Amazon is the single exception and has its own paper.

Modelled on the published pattern; not affiliated with CodeKairo. Every sitting draws a fresh paper from the aptitude bank.