Amazon Interview Experience for SDE-1

Online Round: There were two coding questions with time complexity analysis.

1. Similar to nearest K coordinates from Origin. (Heap)
2. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/minimum-distance-to-the-corner-of-a-grid-from-source/

In the end there were behavioral MCQs. After 3 days I got an email, which it mentioned that I had cleared the online assessment and will be having a quick connect with HR for further instructions. 

Technical Interview 1: This interview was taken by a SDE2. I was asked one easy question :

• There is an Olympic stadium which was filled by ‘n’ spectators of different nationalities who came in the stadium in a particular order. Find the 1st spectator to come in the stadium who was the only one from his nationality.

I gave the interviewer a solution of O(n) time complexity in few minutes. But interviewer wanted me to explore different data structures and tell him  if possible, why and how can we use various DS in this problem and its time complexity and if not possible why not. He also asked me about the implementation of ordered and unordered maps and where to use what. 

Then he asked me few questions on Amazon Leadership Principles:

• Tell me about a time you got a feedback and how did you react to it.
• Tell me about a time you had to dive really deep to handle a crucial situation.

Technical Interview 2: This interview was taken by a SDM and it revolved around CS fundamentals. The interviewer asked me about the subjects I was comfortable with. I said OS/DBMS/OOP/DSA. He started with questions on OS related to scheduling algorithms, processes and threads, multithreading, deadlocks, caching. He asked whether I have implemented cache, I told him I have implemented LRU cache, he asked just the brief of the DS I used. Then asked questions on DBMS related to ACID properties, Normalization and its forms. Then he went with few questions on OOP related to polymorphism, virtual functions, inheritance. In the end he asked few questions on Amazon Leadership Principles:

Technical Interview 3: This interview was taken by a SDE2. I was asked the following questions :

1. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/problems/jump-game/1
2. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/connect-n-ropes-minimum-cost/
3. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-repeating-element-sorted-array-size-n/ with time complexity O(logn)

This interview continued for 1.5 hours. 

Technical Interview 4: This interview was taken by a SDM. The interviewer started by asking some situational questions around the leadership principles. He went really deep into the situations I mentioned. He focused on the minute details. Then he asked me about my projects, followed by a question on DSA.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/subtract-1-from-a-number-represented-as-linked-list/

At the end he asked if I had any questions.

Verdict: After a week, I received a mail from the recruiter saying you are selected.

Tips : 

• Practice coding questions from GFG and Leetcode.
• Have knowledge of projects and work experience you have mentioned in your resume.
• Practice behavioral questions, don’t take them lightly.
• Try to catch the hints the interviewer is giving.

All the best!!