Amazon Interview Experience

The invitation for the SDE-1 Role in Amazon just arrived. In this piece, I’ll talk about my experience with interviews.

I applied to the company on their website for more than 16 months, however, I never got a test link. Unexpectedly, I received the test invitation link last month.

This process has four phases

1. Online Coding Assessment & Work Style Assessment:

The coding round was about 70 minutes on the Hackerrank Platform and we have to solve 2 questions based on DSA. The level of the question was medium.

After 2 weeks, I got confirmation for the Interview Round.

2. Coding Interview:

For one hour, this round was available on the Amazon Chime platform. We each gave a brief introduction before the interview started. We were talking about the lessons from the internships and the college projects. The DSA round (1 Question) on their text editor-based coding platform was the next thing he did. The situation-based story was used to describe the problem statement.

He asked me to optimize it after I had explained the brute force method to him. I described to him various strategies and the time complexity involved. I wrote the coding for it once he gave his consent. He seemed to think my code was satisfactory. I was asked if I had any final questions by the interviewer. I questioned a few things about the development position.

After 1 day, I got invited to the 2nd Interview Round.

3. Coding + Behaviour Interview:

In contrast to the first round, this round included behavioral and coding problems based on the leadership concept of Amazon.com. After an introduction, we immediately began the first two DSA questions. The scenario in the question was based on a genuine issue.

• DP Question: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-minimum-adjustment-cost-of-an-array/
• Find the LCA of the given node: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/lowest-common-ancestor-in-a-binary-search-tree/

I was able to answer both inquiries in the allotted time. I also emphasized to him the intricacy of space and time.

The next few behavioral interview questions are then asked. I responded by considering both the STAR approach and the leadership tenet of Amazon.

I was informed via mail that I have another round coming up in five days following this one.

4. Bar Raiser Round:

On the same call are two interviewers (SDE-Manager and SDE-2). Following his introduction, SDEM questioned LP briefly. One code query regarding file management was given to SDE-2 when it arrived.

• Question: Given a file with data in rows and columns, we need to print the sum of each row and column.

I was given instructions on how to read files in C++ while keeping the row and column sums of two arrays. We also cover a variety of edge cases, including how to figure out how many rows and columns an array should have as well as how to dynamically generate and store a 2D array in memory.

These were all the steps in the process that led to Amazon choosing me.