current status
Status: 2 year Exp at service based company in USA, MS CS
Position: sde 2 Amazon
Location: Seattle
virtual onsite interview
NDA signed so cannot tell the exact question

Date : 19th feb 2021

My journey to this long interview process started on Dec 23rd 2020. I was contacted through linkedln by an amazon recruiter for sde2 position. I was basically having a vacation at that time and was not at all thinking to apply for any big tech company like amazon.
I took a chance and replied to my recruiter on 26th Dec that I am willing to apply for sde1 position as I am not prepared for sde2. She said if I did not meet the bar for sde2 I will be considered for sde1 position. But my interview will be for sde2.
I agreed and applied on a job link sent by the recruiter. On the same day I received a link to complete my online assessment within a week.

OA Assessment :
I gave OA on 4th jan There were 2 question one was hard leetcode and other was medium level but not from leetcode. I couldn't pass all the test cases of medium question but did pass all the test cases for hard level and for both questions I need to mention my approach to solve it. I received a result on the same day that I have cleared OA round, thanks to leetcode community.

I was asked to choose between 3 dates for my next interview which will be total of 4 interviews on the same day of which 3 will be based on coding and one will be system design. And all four rounds will have leadership principles based questions as well.
I choose the last date from the given dates as I needed more time for preparing my coding and system design round. Especially system design as I had 0 exp in this as my current position was more based on front end technology.

I chose 21st jan for my next interview. While preparing for the interview I solved around 200 questions of leetcode and around 40 tushar roy dp videos. (I have already prepared them before, so it didnt take much time to do them again). Also I practiced oop low level design quetion for 2 days and tried to do system design in a week where 1st half I would to system design and 2nd half I would practice coding.
I was only left with one day before interview and I did not prepare anything for my leadership principles questions. By this time I did not receive any invitation from interviewers for my interview on next day. Soon I was informed that the position is already filled and they will take my interview for different team on different day. I was given option again to choose one out of 3 dates. And as I knew that I will need enough time to prepare for low level design and system design questions I again chose the last date that was feb 19 2021.

I started preparing with low level design question from ctci book for almost a week (I was also working for my current company). Then from 1st feb I started preparing for system design for 10 days straight from youtube videos and other resources. I gained some confidence but I knew this topic is vast and I cannot make justice to this in 10 days. Anyways, I then revised my coding questions again primarly amazon freq asked question on leetcode. And gave around 4 days to prepare for leader ship principles. I always thought I could prepare it faster but coming up with scenarios that perfectly fit to the leadership priciples were hard for me but discussing it with my gf and receiveing her feedback helped me in preparing this as well. Now I was very nervous before my interview.

19th feb 2021.
1st Amazon chime round(video):
I received a call from one person and he asked me several leadership questions and than gave me a coding question.
I initially thought it is easy for me to code this question as it was mainly based on manipulating number format inside a string and so I just explained him the approach but then he told me other cases that I was not considering and those cases made the problem more complex. So I started coding and I was getting stuck as I was using multiple while loops. then he asked me to declutter my answer and did that but was unable to write a working code to complete the question. I was disappointed as I knew that I couldnt even finish coding question so I have lost the opportunity for amazon. Interview ended 5 min before and I asked him a question that I have already prepared regarding amazon.

2nd Amazon chime round(video):
This was the system design round. I was joined by 2 people. The question was mainly based on amazon internal system. I tried to come up with the solution but it was not the best. Also they asked me several questions regading my design and I could not answer most of them but could answer few.
Overall this round was not good for me as well.

3rd Amazon chime round(video):
I started this round with sip of monster as I was so unmotivated now to move forward as I was sure I will not get the offer. I was joined again by 2 people. they asked my some leadership questions pressed me harder on one of my answer but I was able to defend it well. Then I received a low level design question for one of the game. I never played that game so I asked them to explain it to me. They opened the game for me and shown how its played. I was asked to first design that game and then write logic on how to play. I was able to rock this round as I was able to complete my design of game as well as write the logic to play it(it involved bfs algo). Interviewer seemed happy and I finished this round 5 min before my next round

4th Amazon chime round(video):
I was contacted by a guy working from 8 years in Amazon. He again asked me several leadership principles based questions. By this time I repeated most of my stories. Then for some reason the coding link question was not working so we decided to code in the system design round link.
The question was again based on low level design of a system (similar to lru, lfu cache but different int the way it will work). I have previously solved lru and lfu but this was quite different from them. With the help of my interviewer I could manage to write a brute force way to design that cache. This round continued for more than an hour. Overall I was not very optimistic with this round as I needed lots of hints and still managed to get a brute force algo.

Received a call on monday 22nd feb that I can be offered sde-1. OfCourse Accepted.