In-Memory URL Shortener: Encode and Decode
Company: Microsoft
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design a class-based data structure with paired encode and decode operations that maintain a consistent mapping in memory. It tests object-oriented design and hash map usage for achieving constant-time lookups, commonly asked in coding interviews to assess system design fundamentals at the data-structure level.