Status: BE CSE at Tier 2 University, 6 Months experienced in a service based company
Position Interviewed for: Amazon SDE1
Location: Bangalore (Interviews were completely virtual)
Month: March 2021

Application Process:
Received a mail from Amazon recruitment team for SDE1 opening. Applied for the same and was immediately processed for further rounds. Signed an NDA so would not be specifying the exact question.

Round 1: (Online coding / behavioral round)

• Conducted in Hackerrank
• Duration: 2 hrs
• Question 1: BFS in graph based LC medium question
• Question 2: Customized sorting question based on maps, set and string
• Behavioral questions: There were around 50 behavioral questions, having tqo possible options. I was asked to specify which option represented my inclination. Also I was asked whether I agreed or srongly agreed to the same.
• Was expected to write code and also explain the approach along with time and space complexities
• My thoughts / performance: Was able to solve both the programming questions along with complete explanation. For the behavioral part I tried to choose those options that were more aligned to Amazon's leadership principles.

Recruiter Call: Received feedback within 5 days post coding test. Was asked location preference and was aligned a date 15 days from the date of this call. I was informed that there will be 3 non elimination interviews followed by another round if I cleared the 3 rounds. All the interviews were conducted in Chime and there was a live coding link (test editor with syntax highligting) for the first 3 rounds.

Round 2: (Hiring Manager round)

• Duration: 1 hour
• Started with questions on my current work experience and my previous projects
• Behavioral questions were also asked based on Amazon Leadership Principles
• Technical Question: A scenario was presented which boiled down to an LC Easy-Medium based Graph question
• Follow ups on the same question were also asked, for which coding was not expected, but the approaches where expected to make minimal changes to the existing code.
• My thoughts / performance: I was able to explain / answer all the questions on my resume, the interviewer seemed satisfied with the same. For the behavioral questions I followed the STAR principle. I was able to answer the technical question, wrote a clean code and suggested approaches for the follow ups which the interviewer seemed good to go.

Round 2: (Technical round)

• Duration: 1 hour
• Jumped straight to coding questions
• Question 1: LC medium tree question. Expected Time Complexity: O(n) Expected Space Complexity: O(1)
• Question 2: LC Easy-Medium Array Rearrangement question. Expected Time Complexity: O(n) Expected Space Complexity: O(1)
• Question 3: LC Easy-Medium Tree question. Expected Time Complexity: O(n) Expected Space Complexity: O(n)
• My thoughts / performance: I was initially told that there would be 2 questions. Solved both with expected complexities and wrote clean code. Since there was around 20 minutes left on the clock he proceeded to the 3rd question. I was able to solve the same and wrote clean code. The interviewer seemed thoroughly impressed.

Round 3: (Technical round)

• Duration: 1 hour
• Started with my introduction. The interviewer was specifically keen on the projects I did.
• Behavioral questions based on Amazon Leadership principles were asked.
• Question 1: LC Medium-Hard Backtracking question. Expected Time Complexity: O(2^n) Expected Space Complexity: O(1) (Excluding recursion stack)
• Question 2: LC Medium-Hard String manipulation question. Expected Time Complexity: O(n * k)
• My thoughts / performance: For the Behavioral questions I used STAR method. I was able to solve both the coding questions along with clean code. The interviewer seemed very satisfied.

Recruiter Call: Received a call from the recruiter after 5 days. He said that the feedback was positive and they would move to the final round which was the Bar-Raiser round

Round 4: (Bar Raiser round)

• Duration: 1 hour
• Started with my introduction. The interviewer was specifically keen on the projects I did.
• The round mostly focussed on Behavioral questions based on Amazon Leadership Principles, and general Software engineering concepts like scalablity, extendablity, reusablity etc.
• All these questions were mostly aligned to my resume and detailed / in-depth discussion was carried out.
• No coding question was asked in my case.
• My thoughts / performance: For the Behavioral questions I used STAR method. I was able to explain the questions on my resume to the best of my knowledge. The interviewer seemed very much satisfied with my performance.

Recruiter Call / Results: Received a call after 5 days from the recruiter saying that my interview feedback was positive and they are proceeding with my offer. The recruiter also asked my current compensation details and my expectations which I have listed here. The offer was confirmed after 5 days and it aligned with my expectations.

General thoughts on interviews:

• The technical questions asked were pretty much standard questions, with some good preparation one would be able to crack them easily
• There was a good amount of focus on behavioral questions based on Amazon Leadership principles
• In programming questions, writing clean code was expected (naming variables with relevant names, syntax error free code and usage of modularity and reusability)
• There was also significant focus on my resume and in depth questions were asked.
• The interviewers were also very friendly and answered all my clarifying questions during the interviews.
• Questions were sometimes open ended, so I was expected to ask clarifying questions before making any assumptions.
• There was also a good amount of focus on edge cases, and I made sure I didn't miss out on any.

Preparation Strategy:

• DS and Algo focus was very important and company wise preparation would surely help
• Knowledge on Amazon's Leadership Principles is a must and one should be able to correlate their experiences with the questions asked (STAR principle)
• Strong knowledge on the resume and projects is also expected as some interviewers might dig deep on the same
• No design questions were asked in my case but I have seen basic questions on class based programming being asked in other interviews
• Also focus on the common OS, DBMS, Networks and OOPS concepts as some interviewers may touch upon those concepts
• Overall be strong, confident and honest during preparation and while interviewing as well.

P.S. This is my first post on Leetcode, so any suggestions for improvement is warmly welcomed