How to instantiante object & call setter on same line?

Question

If I have an Employee class with a default constructor:

private String firstName;
public Employee(){}

and a setter:

Answer 1

Although this is a bit overkill, you could try using the builder pattern

public class Employee{
    private String firstName;

    public static class Builder{
        private String firstName;

        public Builder firstName(String firstName){
            this.firstName = firstName;
            return this;
        }

        public Employee build(){
            return new Employee(this);
        }
    }

    private Employee(Builder builder){
        firstName = builder.firstName;
    }
}

Then you can do the following

Employee e = new Employee.Builder().firstName("John").build();