​SDE Interview experience: Amazon

I gave an interview for Amazon, almost a year ago for the SDE2(L4) position, but I was rejected. Every round they ask Leadership Principles questions, the whole process took about 1-1.5 months.

Here is my experience.

Telephonic Round:

In this round, the interviewer started with his introduction and then asked my introduction followed by some LP questions.

Then the interviewer asked me a coding question, it was Leetcode Medium String-based problem, I discussed the solution using Hashmap which was the most optimal solution, he was satisfied with the approach and Asked me to code it,

After the coding, I dry and run the test case, and then the interviewer asked me some follow-up questions about the same problem and asked me to code it, finally, we started a discussion on hashmap, its internal working and implementations, for the next 10 minutes he asked another few leadership principle questions and gave me 5 minutes to ask some questions, we finished 5 minutes earlier.

Overall I felt very confident after this round. 😊

2 days later I got a call from a recruiter asking for onsite interview schedules as I passed the telephonic round.

Onsite Rounds:

Round 1-PS(Data structure and algorithm round)

The interview started with a self-introduction of each other followed by some leadership principle questions for the next 10 minutes,

then the interviewer proceeded with the coding problem, which was Leetcode 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 linked list problem, I told him two pointers based approach, and he was fully satisfied and then asked me to derive Time complexity, we spend 4-5 minutes on this, then he asked me for another approach, I came up with a heap-based approach, he was convinced and after discussing time complexities he asked me to code any one approach, I choose two pointer approach, but then he asked to code the heap-based approach in which I made mistake during implementation. This round was not as good as expected as we spend too much time deriving Time complexity.

Round 2: Object Oriented Design round(LLD)

This round was later postponed to the last round.

We started with self-introductions and then proceed with the problem.

The Problem statement was very long, I had to ask several clarifying questions. The interviewer was more focused on solving problems than the object-oriented approach. I was given to design a game, the interviewer told me I don't have to solve the whole problem but expected to solve a portion of it. I was able to implement a part of this problem but I could have done better.

Later he asked some LP questions.

Round 3: HM and Design Round:

After an introduction and a few questions based on LP. we proceeded with an HLD question, It’s a very open-ended question, HM first asked some basic questions for designing(DB, protocols etc.) then we moved to dig dive into each component. I felt that I could not do well in this round, as we spend more time designing DB than the whole components.

Round 4: Bar raiser round:

We started with our introduction then He asked a few LP questions,

Then moved to the coding problem, which was Medium difficulty, I told him the hashmap approach but He asked me to solve it in O(1) time I couldn’t figure it out, later I realized we could optimize each query in O(1) using Doubly LinkedList but not the whole problem can be solved in O(1), overall this round also went ok.

Final Result:

I was hoping for an offer but Got a rejection email after 1 week. Luckily got feedback that I couldn’t do well in the design rounds for the level.

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