Status:BSc.(Hon) CS school in Canada
Position: SDE1 at Amazon
Experience:- 8 months Internship at a Big NON-FANG company + 2 months Professional experience at the same company.
Location: Vancouver, CA
Date: Mid September, 2019
I didn’t apply for this position, Recruiter contacted me and the whole process took close to 3 months. Another thing to note is that you won’t be able to check your application status online. I couldn’t as my recruiter didn’t linked my application to my amazon account. So it can happen, Don’t stress out on that.
Online Assessment (90 mins) (2 Questions and describe your approach)
Ques1:- Heap question, something similar to return minimum cost of joining ropes.
Ques2:- Similar to Shortest Path in to a node in a graph.
Ques3 (15 min for both questions ):- Describe the approach of both questions, its complexities etc. Don’t worry it not a video thing.You have to type everything out.
Finished both very early with all the test cases passed. 3 weeks after get contacted for Phone screen (1 hour).
Technical phone screen (1 hour) - Skipped (Recruiter email a day before stating that I don’t need to do it and will be moving straight to Onsite):
- Recruiter asked a few behavioral questions and basic CS concept Questions (like disadvantage of Hash Table, delete Node in Binary Tree and few more)
Scheduled Onsite (11 days from the call)
Onsite (4 rounds):
Round 1:- LP {Critical Feedback} (Earn Trust) for behavioral, Kth Largest element in an array. Was aiming towards an Average Case O(n). Quick Select. A bunch of follow ups regarding the same. what if there is an infinite input stream. Solved all the feedback. Interviewer was satisfied.
Round 2: -LP{Something you did additionally to WoW your customer}(Customer Obsession). Coding Question was similar to Finding a file a File System with multiple constrained. I guess the interviewer was trying to assess my how I handle my code when another requirements come along. Like customers also want to add this or this.
Round 3 (No Coding & System design) (LP only):- Two interviewers (Senior Engineer and Manager) asked 4 or 5 LPs {Describe a time when you Learned something new}(Learn and Be Curious), {Difficult Customer}(Earn trust)(Customer Obsession), {Describe a time when you didn’t have time to analyse all options}(Bias for Action). They only asked LPs and my work experience and school projects because of my experience probably. It was a good round. Interviewers were super nice and experienced.
Round 4:- {Describe a time when you have dive deep to find out a solution to a problem}(Dive Deep). The coding problem was a graph problem. Interviewer was satisfied.
Result: Contacted by Recruiter after (12 business days / 18 Regular) days with an Offer. Don’t believe that standard deadline of 5 days is a Hard deadline. Sometimes it takes more time. Be optimistic!!.
Preparations:- ~150 LC. Mostly focused on Top 100 liked question. I didn’t do amazon section specifically. Used CTCI for learning how to find Complexity without any mistakes (check it out). Interviewed with friends to wear down my nervousness (Really helpful) (Used Code pair). Used Interviewgene for LP story practice. Watched youtube video of solutions when faced problem understanding solution.
Takeaway:- Focus on LP more, that’s what people don’t realise. LP worth more than you think, sometimes even more than your coding skills. Problem Solving is one of the components they assess, so make sure you think out loud when you code. Interviewer may interrupt you if you are going the wrong path. Have an interview buddy, If not you can always use pramp. Try to learn concepts not Questions.
Don’t worry about optimization initially, always try to get the Brute force solution first and make your way up.