Status: Member Technical Staff, Product Based company in Chennai
Education : Bachelors in Computer Science, Tier 3 College
Experience : 5+
Position: SDE2 at Amazon
Location: Chennai
Date: Nov 2021
Previous Compensation : 20 LPA
LC Solved : 850+ (Easy 200+, Medium 450+, Hard 180+)
First of all I would like to thank the Leetcode community for all the help and motivation towards getting an Offer at Amazon. I will explain my whole journey including preparation, strategy and general interview experience in this post.
It all started One Year back when I felt that I'm not learning much from my work and mostly the work was monotonous. So I decided to start my preparation. At this point of time I don't Know what LeetCode is. I came to the conclusion that I need to be strong in Technical Side. So I started taking Stanford University Algorithms Course - II from Coursera. Did it one Week and couldn't follow the schedule along with work as this needs allocating a certain dedicated amount of time. So From Nov to March I gave up studying.
Came to know about leetcode from one of my friends. Initially it took me around 40 minutes to solve a problem of easy difficulty. To solve Hard it took even a complete day. My friend told me that the usual interview is around 45 minutes and the expected Speed to solve a problem was
- Easy - 2 to 5 minutes.
- Medium - 5 to 10 minutes
- Hard - 15 to 25 minutes
On coming to know this I was shocked as It took even a complete day for me to solve hard problems.
I made a preparation strategy.
- Solve the daily leetcode challenge every day without failing.
I wanted to try and know how interviews would be. So I applied for Amazon and the recruiter contacted me via Phone. Failed on the online assessment itself with only half of the test cases passed. I understood that it would take time to master the speed and thinking process to solve the problems. I was hesitant to buy Leetcode premium at first. But after knowing that it is a long journey I immediately bought an annual subscription. It helped me a lot in practicing mock interview assessments (Premium Feature).
Expanded my strategy to
- Solve the daily leetcode challenge every day without failing.
- Attend the weekly & Bi-Weekly Contest without failing.
- Complete the Explore card under the interview section. (Premium feature)
- Apart from these Solve the Company tagged questions. (Premium feature)
- Complete the Algorithms Course.
For the Behavioral Interview :
Used the Rock the behavioral interview explore card from leetcode and used pra*p for mock interviews. For this part I took the help of my wife as I do not have any friends with whom I can prepare with. She comes from a different background (non-IT) but has skills managing people around. It is because of this preparation I got myself into Amazon. The reason is that Amazon has leadership questions on each and every round. So If you are applying for Amazon be well prepared on the leadership principles and create stories based on the STAR framework. Also Have someone to review your answers as another person's view is needed to evaluate whether the answers look genuine or not.
For the System Design Interviews :
Learnt the basics from gr*ck*ng the system design interview and watched many Youtube Video Tutorials. To get confidence I used pra*p for mock interviews.
Took me 6 weeks to complete the Algorithms course . At this point of time I was technically strong but needed practice in speed and thinking.
After four months of preparation I had solved 400+ problems and had the confidence to apply for interviews. As my target was google, I didn't concentrate much on System Design Interviews as it is not needed upto L4 at Google. But I took a leap of faith and applied for Oracle and got an offer, but Declined offer as it was not upto my expectations. You can read the interview experience here.
I was contacted by a Google recruiter via LinkedIn. Before attending google interview my speed in weekly contests was able to solve 2 medium and 1 easy under 45 mins to 1 Hour. Also I was able to solve all the 4 problems in some contests within time. That gave me confidence. By this time many recruiters from Amazon were contacting me. I told them that I'm under the cooldown period and would contact them back once it is over.
I was rejected at Google for not meeting the bar for Hiring Committee Review. The main negative feedback from all the Google interviewers is regarding my communication skill. Even though I was able to solve the problems pretty fast in leetcode, during the interviews we needed to explain the code to the interviewer. That is the part where I slowed down. If you take more time in explaining you are eating up more precious time. Full Google Interview experience is here [https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1588577/Google-or-L4-or-Hyderabad-or-Sep-2021-Reject].
By this time I had solved around 850+ problems in Leetcode and was able to solve 2 medium and 1 easy under 30 minutes during the contest. Also my cool down period for Amazon was over. I contacted one of the recruiters from LinkedIn and scheduled the interview for SDE-2. You can find the complete amazon interview experience here. Got an offer from Amazon and accepted it.
I have never missed a problem in daily leetcode challenges and freqeuently improved my speed with mock assessment.
I attended all the contests except the last two as I was on vacation. I have a score of 1900+ on the contest ranking and a Knight Badge.
It has been a long journey for me for the past one year. I even gave up in between but hard work paid off. It was difficult to allocate time in between work to prepare for the interviews. I bet it would have been easy if you were a bachelor. But being a family man and preparing all the time for interviews is not that easy. We both understood the importance and sacrificed our entertainment etc..
It took me 7 Months of Leetcode preparation to get an offer that is upto my expectations. I’m glad I rejected the offer from Oracle (because of the low compensation). It was too risky, but worth it.
Just a note that I did not add the images for boasting. I was rejected at the OA stage on my first interview and managed to crack an interview at FAANG by practice. If Solving LC-Hard problem in 1 day to solving a LC-Hard in 15 minutes is achievable by me you can too. I also come from Tier-3 college background. So Never give up on yourself and always pursue what you want with complete effort. Do not give up hope and destroy the opportunity by yourself.
Interview Experiences :
Oracle : https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1372591/Oracle-or-IC-3-or-Bangalore-or-July-2021-Offer-Declined
Google : https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1588577/Google-or-L4-or-Hyderabad-or-Sep-2021-Reject
Amazon : https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1588548/Amazon-or-SDE2-or-Chennai-or-Nov-2021-Offer-Accepted
Offers :
Oracle : https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/1368082/Oracle-or-IC3-or-Bangalore
Amazon : https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/1588451/Amazon-or-SDE2-or-Chennai