Explain C++ containers, segfaults, and virtual dispatch
Company: TikTok
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Software Engineering Fundamentals
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Overview: This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of C++ language and runtime fundamentals — covering standard container implementations and performance trade-offs, causes of segmentation faults and memory-safety issues, and the object model behind virtual dispatch — and is commonly asked to probe low-level reasoning about memory layout, performance characteristics, and debugging ability in systems and software engineering contexts. It tests both conceptual understanding (vtable/vptr mechanics, construction/destruction semantics, single vs multiple inheritance implications) and practical application (container selection and diagnosing memory errors) within the domain of software engineering fundamentals and systems programming.