## MyStory#00 – Preface

I started programming back in 2011. Next September (2019) will be exactly 8 years since I started my career as a programmer. When I started programming in 2011, I was a complete novice. I started learning programming from scratch in University. Today, I am working in Google as a Software Engineer (I am assuming that landing a job in Google counts as an achievement and indicates that my skill in programming has increased since 2011).

Out of my 7.5 year of programming career, the first 5 years were completely dedicated to Competitive Programming and Problem Solving (CPPS). My greatest achievement in CPPS is qualifying for ACM ICPC World Finals 2016. In order to pursue my passion for CPPS, I switched university twice (AIUB to DIU and then DIU to NSU) and as a result, it took me 6.5 years to complete my undergraduation.

Well, the above information should give you rough idea of who I am. As to what this “Preface” thing is about; well, it’s a preface of my story. My story about how I got from a complete programming novice to World Finalist + Googler. Currently, only I know what I have been through and how. By sharing my story I am hoping that everyone will get to know the same life lessons that I learned from my journey. I think the story is quite fascinating and contains answers to many of the questions that beginner programmers often face. For example:

# Problem

Given a number $N$, find the sum of all numbers less than or equal to $N$ that are co-prime with $N$.

In case you forgot, a number $x$ is co-prime with $N$ if $gcd(x,N) = 1$.

For example, if $N = 10$, then the following numbers are co-prime with it: $[1, 3, 7, 9]$. Therefore, sum of co-prime numbers will be $1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 = 20$.

# Solution

Let us define a function $f(n)$, which gives us sum of all numbers less than or equal to $n$ that are co-prime to $n$. Then we can calculate the value of $f(n)$ with the following formula:

$$\bbox[yellow,5px]{ f(n) = \frac{\phi(n)}{2}n }$$

where $\phi(n)$ is Euler Phi Function.

For example, for $n = 10$, then we get the sum of co-prime as:

\begin{align} f(10) & = \frac{\phi(10)}{2} \times 10 \\ & = \frac{4}{2} \times 10 \\ & = 20 \end{align}

## My Interview Experience with Shopee / Garena / Sea Group

Recently, lots of fresh graduates are applying to Shopee/Garena from Bangladesh. As one of the first Bangladeshi to be working in Shopee Singapore, many people ask me about my interview experience with them. Hopefully, this post will be useful for them.

I worked as a Software Engineer at Shopee from July 2018 to October 2018. I interviewed with Shopee/Garena last year (August 2017), so it has been a while. But from what I heard, the process did not change much since then.

Before we look into the interview process, first let us look into the company itself.

# What is SeaGroup?

Disclaimer

All information provided here are my opinions and interpretations only. I will advise you to validate the correctness of this information yourself.

SeaGroup is an internet company based in Singapore. It has three products:

1. Garena (a gaming platform where you can buy/sell games; kind of like Steam).
2. Shopee (e-commerce site like Amazon, Daraz, Pickaboo, Alibaba, Lazada)
3. Airpay (kind of like Bkash, Upay, Ipay).

Garena was once considered a Unicorn. Garena then rebranded itself into SeaGroup and went for IPO last year September 2017.

Many people get confused between Garena and Shopee. For example, I was hired by Garena and on my S-Pass (Legal ID of Singapore) it was written that I was employed by “Garena Online Private Ltd”. Yet, I was assigned as Engineer at Shopee. Since Shopee and Garena are sister companies, don’t be surprised if you get shuffled.

So, without loss of generality, I will be just saying “Shopee” instead of “Shopee/Garena/SeaGroup” from now on.