Yoe : 2 years 11 months
Education - Tier-3
LC solved - 530+
Currently employed: FinTech startup

Note: I will not be able to share the exact questions as I had signed an NDA

Online Assesment
I was given H**kerrank link and the questions were easy. First question I don't remember but it was easy and the second one was based on graphs.

After 2 weeks, recruited contacted me and said that she will arrange virtual interviews.
She gave me 1 week of time to prepare. I had 3 interviews on the same day with a gap of 30 minutes between any two of them.

Round-1 (System Design + Hiring Manager, 1 hour)

1. Introduction
2. Deep dive into one of the previos projects
3. LP questions
4. One of the most popular question on system design (You can easily find it on ed*cative .io)

Round-2 (Problem Solving, 1 hour)

1. Short intro and previous projects I have worked on
2. 1 Question on HashMap and Custom comparator (was asked to write production ready code after discussing the approach)
3. LP questions

Round-3 (System Design, 1.5 hours)

1. Introduction
2. Started with a lot of LP questions
3. Classical System Design question (You can find it on codek*rle .com)
4. Interviewer asked a lot of counter questions, how would you handle failures, etc

HR called me 2 days later to schedule the next round. I asked for 1 week preparation time as I wanted to give my best shot.

Round-4 (Bar raiser round, 1 hour)

1. First 15 mins got wasted as I was facing some network issue. And the interviewer also had to attend the next call, so he interviewed only for 45 mins.
2. Started off with my previous projects
3. 2 LP questions
4. LC medium question of Trees. (I missed a few edge cases)
5. Design patterns that I know and their applications

I thought I performed poorly in this round. Also, I was frustrated due to the connectivity issues and the fear of failure was there as I didn't want to get rejected after coming so close.

After 4-5 days, I got a call from the HR that I have been selected as an SDE-2 at Amazon.

Again after 2-3 days, Hiring Manager had a call with me to give a brief about the work I would be doing and the tech stack I would be working on.

It is a mixed feeling for me now. On one side I am happy that coming from a Tier-3 university, I got a job offer at Amazon, and on the other side, I feel that whether I will be able to survive at Amazon or not. The tech stack that I will be working is completely new. And I have never worked on projects, at the scale, at which Amazon works. Initial phase is going to be a bit of struggle. But no issues, I will be putting in my 100% and let the result follow.

Preparation strategy:
I started leetcoding in Feb 2020. Since then, I have solved 530+ questions. Initially. I used to spend around 1.5 hours before looking at solutions. With time, I came down to 1 hour.
For System Design, you can watch Youtube vidoes and prepare notes on your own.

Preparation strategy(specific to Amazon):
Problem Solving:
https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/488887/Amazon-Final-Interview-Questions-or-SDE1

Leadership Principles(LP):
https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/437082/Amazon-Behavioral-questions-or-Leadership-Principles-or-LP

Thank you Leetcode community for keeping me inspired throughout this preparation journey.

Compensation: Amazon