Status: 3+ YOE, BTech from Tier 1 College, Non-CS
Position: SDE 2 at a Startup
Location: Hyderabad
Date: August-Sepetember 2021
Recruiter reached out to me. Shared an OA Link.
Round 1 (OA, Hackerrank, 90 mins)
Two Questions
- Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/coin-change/
- Similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-points-you-can-obtain-from-cards/
Both weren't exactly the mentioned LC problems but where very similar, also Problem Statements were such that the problem belongs to an internal situation within Amazon.
Followed by two subjective questions about the approach taken and Time and Space Complexities of the solution.
Followed by around 30-35 option based behavorial questions.
Got a call wihin a day that I've cleared the OA and Recruiter scheduled a Phone-Screen round after 3 days.
Round 2 (Phone Screen, DSA + LLD, 1 hr)
- Two sum problem but on Linked Lists
- Class Design for Snake and Ladders Game. Follow-up questions like how will this design handle single player playing multiple games etc.
- 1 LP question, pretty easy and straightforward
Interviewer was friendly and I did pretty well in this round.
Got a call from recruiter within 2 days that I've cleared and scheduled Virtual onsites on Chime after two weeks.
Round 3 (DSA + LLD, 1hr)
Started with a LP question in answer to which I discussed one past experience on a project that I was working, then for coming 30 minutes interviewer kept digging-in on various aspects of the project and kept asking what parts were your own contribution etc. etc. Interviewer wasn't friendly and I got annoyed in this discussion.
Then for remaining 30 mins he asked Class Design for an Elevator-system. I did it quickly. He discussed how I'll handle some scenarios then asked me to code the Elevator-scheduler part ie Given a request from a particular floor as input, output which lift will serve the request.
I felt I did well in the coding part, but I was pretty disinterested because of the first-half discussion.
Round 4 (System Design, 1hr)
Round was taken by a someone with 15+ years of experience. Started with some discussion on previous projects and contributions. He wasn't happy with the fact I haven't desgined any systems in my work so far. Then he asked a design problem.
Problem was to desgin a system for JEE Mains registered students to Book slots for upcoming Exam. I did it as it wasn't much of a complex problem. Main part was to handle multiple requests for a single slot especially when the slot is about to get over. But the interviewer wanted me consider scenarios like More requests would be from South India and there would be very minimal requests from North-East portion etc.
Followed 3-4 LP questions.
I wasn't sure if I did well in this round.
Round 5 (DSA, 1 hr)
https://leetcode.com/problems/top-k-frequent-words/
Discussed a naive approach first, then an approach with Hashing and Min-Heap. Coded the second approach.
Followed by 2-3 LP based questions.
I did well in this round.
Got no response for few days, after following up with recruiter he informed that it's a Reject, especially the Hiring Manager (Design round) hasn't given a Positive feedback.
Note:
These days LP based questions are given a lot of time. More than 1/4th of the time was spent discussing on them. That too they dig-in very deep on the stories that we share to make sure it is genuine, else if they catch then it's a negative. I didn't lie in any of my stories but some situations asked were so particular that I didn't have any relevant story to tell and they weren't happy with that too.
Also for SDE 2 roles, prior contributions in system-level problems is expected, so try to gather some experience on that via some external or internal projects.
Honestly, I didn't have a very good experience in the interview process, most interviewers (except the phone screen round) were emotionless. I am not feeling bad that I couldn't make it.