I was interviewed for SDE3 at Amazon, Austin TX.
There were an initial phone conversation with the recruiter and then she sent me two online assignments. I don’t remember exactly what it was but they were pretty easy.
After that I was invited for the onsite interview. The onsite had 4 50-min rounds each.
1st Round:
- Tell me a project you have worked that you found out it could be much bigger after you started working on this.
- What was the most innovate solution you’ve worked on
- Coding: Given a “dictionary of alien words”, find the correct alphabet order
2nd Round:
- Tell me a project where you had to work with tight deadlines.
- Tell me a project where you had to analyze the initial solution and then found a differnet solution for the problem.
- Coding: build a dependency system where a task can only start after its dependency has been completed.
3rd Round
- System Design: Design the Google News system. The system should have about 2000 sources. The news should have less than 1min delay and you should be able to assign topics to the news.
- Tell me a time when you did more than what was expected for your job.
- Tell me a time when you didn’t meet what you have the commited for.
4th Round
- Tell me a time where you received bad comments/reviews about you/your job.
- Tell me a time where you had to work with tight deadline and/or under pressure.
- Coding: Given an matrix of letters, rotate it clock-wise.
I thought I did well on the first 3 interviews but I ended not receiving an offer.