Amazon Interview Experience for SDE-1 (On-Campus)

Online round: This round consisted of 7 easy debugging questions, 2 coding questions, a lot of behavioral questions, and mathematical aptitude questions. The coding questions for Amazon Online Assessment are almost always repeated. I don’t remember the 2 questions I was given exactly but you might find similar questions here https://algo.monster/problems/amazon_online_assessment_questions. Try to do both of them and answer behavioral questions seriously.

Technical Interview 1: The interviewer started with her introduction and then asked me to give my introduction. Then she directly jumped to coding questions.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/merge-k-sorted-arrays/
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/reduce-the-array-such-that-each-element-appears-at-most-2-times/

For the first question, I was able to come up with a solution but that wasn’t having the best time and space complexity. Upon being given a hint by the interviewer, I solved it with the best space and time complexity. I was able to solve the second question with the best time and space complexity in one go.

Technical Interview 2: Started the same as round 1, then jumped to coding.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/minimum-time-required-so-that-all-oranges-become-rotten/
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/given-sorted-array-number-x-find-pair-array-whose-sum-closest-x/

Need to solve both the questions with the best time and space complexity. I was able to do the first one easily but for the second one I started with the two-pointer approach after sorting but he was trying to confuse me I guess so he said this might not work. Since I was not sure as well, so I gave him another approach of binary search for every number. He asked me to code the second approach. He was very helpful while I tried to dry run the second approach. The round lasted for about 1 hour 20mins. In the end, I was asked a behavioral question. 

Tell me about a time when you innovated/invented something?

Bar raiser round: Jumped straight to the coding part.

• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/print-all-combinations-of-balanced-parentheses/

I was able to do the above in the first 15 minutes so then he jumped to SQL. A SQL query based on join and count. Discussion on all the scheduling algorithms. What algorithms I would use for something like Cowin. Modified the questions to accommodate FCFS and priority-based scheduling in the Cowin app. Finally was asked a behavioral question. Tell me about a time you took a risk.? Then we discussed the extra-curricular mentioned in my resume. 

In all the rounds I was given the option to ask any questions at the end of the round, so have some questions prepared. Overall the process took more than 2 months. I’m not from CS/IT and my CPI is also not that great. I was not allowed to sit for a few companies because of my CPI but I did have faith in my skills. 

Verdict: Selected

Tips:

• DSA is important but a lot of questions are very common and are repeated. Refer to this for a starting point https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/amazon-interview-questions/
• I was not prepared for the theory part in the last round so prepare for those too.
• Work on communicating with your interviewer.
• Be thorough with everything you have mentioned in your resume.
• Believe in the process when you are working hard, things will work out eventually.