Status: Software Engineer at a Service based company
Education: B Tech from Tier 3 college
YOE: 1 year+
Postion: SDE1 at Amazon
Location: Bangalore
Date: 8 Nov 2021
There were a total of 4 rounds + 1 round of Online Coding Test
Round 1: Online Test
Happened in 1st week of September & the duration of the test was 1 hr 30 mins. There were 2 questions which were easy-standard priority-queue questions (not in leetcode). I was able to do them in under 30 minutes along with the explaination of my approach.
Got a call from Amazon for my interview in 1st week of November.
Round 2: Coding
The interviewer was a SDE-1, she asked me 2 coding questions [Explaination + Coding + Code Review].
- 3Sum closest: https://leetcode.com/problems/3sum-closest/
- https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-palindromic-substring/
I was able to complete all the questions in 50 minutes, after which she asked me 1 LP based question.
Round 3: Coding
The interviewer was a SDE-2. For the first 10 minutes, he asked me some CS subject based questions, from there he switched onto coding questions. I was asked a total of 3 questions in this round.
- https://leetcode.com/problems/copy-list-with-random-pointer/
- https://leetcode.com/problems/next-greater-element-i/
- https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands/
Was able to complete all the questions with the required opitmal approaches.
Round 4: Hiring Manager
The interviewer was a SDM, and had an experience of over 20 years. He was extremely friendly and calm during the whole process. In this round, he asked me different LP-based questions along with few CS-subject based questions [only for the last 10 minutes].
Round 5: Bar Raiser
The interviewer was a SDM with a experience of over 10 years. Honestly speaking, she was very un-friendly & gave extremely vague questions with no proper examples & explainations. She asked me 3 coding questions, out of which I was only able to complete 1st question, and almost completed the 2nd question. She gave me the 3rd question when only 4 minutes were left.
- https://leetcode.com/problems/best-time-to-buy-and-sell-stock-ii/
- https://leetcode.com/problems/best-time-to-buy-and-sell-stock-iv/
- Given a number, find the next largest number, that is a palindrome.
Key Takeways
- It is always better to start with brute force approach, then move towards the best optimal approach you can think of.
- Don't code first or code then explain your approach. Only code once the interviewer is satisified with your approach [time & space complexities]
- Ask multiple questions - so that you get to know what exactly the question requires.
- Always try to use named meaningful variables & function names along with comments. Example of meaningful variables - if the question is asking for profit, name the function like findProfit.
- Important; dont give up on any of the questions asked.
Resources used
For CS subject-based questions - refer GeeksForGeeks.
Leetcode Amazon list: https://leetcode.com/list/993pj5s2
Note
I had all of interview rounds on the same day, and recieved the offer after 3 days.
Feel free to reach out, in case of any questions or queries.