Background : YOE - 4 Months Full Time, 5 Months Internship
Current Position : SWE - 1 at Product Based Firm

Round 1- Online Assessment - Oct 2021
Part 1 - 2 Coding Questions (Sorting, Heap based) + Write Approach for both problems and Space and Time complexities

Part 2 - Work Style (Behavioral questions)

Platform - Hackerrank

Solved both questions with optimal time and space complexities.

Note : You can search for previously asked OA questions. You will get lot more clear picture about the pattern.

November 2021 - I was informed that further 3 rounds will be conducted in next two weeks.

November 2021 - Interview Day. Supposed to have 2 Technical rounds, did not recieve any Meeting link. Mailed and got no replies from HR.

Mid December 2021 - Got a call from HR. Scheduled 2 Technical rounds after 2 days.

Round 2 - Virtual Technical Interview with SDE-2 - 1 Hour

• 5 Mins Intro

• She Directly jumped to coding questions

• First question was based on Two-Pointer algorithm (LC-Medium)

• Explained Brute force approach, asked to optimize

• Provided Clean working code with optimal Solution

• Asked to explain time and space complexity before writing the code

• Asked to dry run the code

• Found 1 missing edge case. Quickly fixed that

• She looked happy

• 2nd Question was based on Hashmap,LinkedList (LC-Medium)

• 30 Minutes was remaining also this question was implementation heavy question

• Explained Brute force and along with that started optimizing my solution

• Took 5-7 Minutes to explain my thought process

• She clarified various things as she had some doubts on my approach

• At last I was asked to quickly summerize the solution approach with time complexities.

• She looked satisfied and I was asked to write the clean working solution

• Wrote the solution and we had a good discussion. She even provided some hints to help creating some reusable components. I took 10-12 minutes to write the code.

• I handled edge cases gracefully while writing the code (Leetcode discussion section has helped me alot to develop this art)

• She looked satisfied

• In the last 5 minutes we had a casual discussion on new work from home policies, tech stack etc.

Round 3 - Virtual Technical Interview with Very Senior SDE-2 - 1 Hour

• 5 Minutes Intro
• Jumped to coding questions
• Coding Question 1: Binary Tree Based LC- Medium question
• Provided a wrong solution. He asked to dry run
• I quickly Identified that my solution won't work on many scenarios.
• Provided another solution. It was iterative solution with most optimal space and time complexity
• Asked to write production level clean working code
• I did not miss any edge case
• Dry ran the code and he looked satisfied. I solved this question in almost 15-20 minutes
• 2nd Question
• He began with a Question (LC-Medium) Sorting + Two Pointer based
• I explained the brute force and optimized simultaneously.
• He looked satisfied and further asked a follow up.
• Now the question became very interesting (LC-Medium)
• A further optimization on the previous approach was required
• I identified that we can use HEAP their. Some analysis and proof of solution was required
• Interviewer was very friendly and provided enough hints along the way while coding this solution.
• He was impressed with my skills, as we had a great discussion.
• At last he asked me 2 Leadership questions based my projects
• He extended the interview to 5 mintues more for the same.

Got the call after completing these 2 rounds on the same day for next round. This round was conducted in the very next day.

Round 4 - Virtual Interview with Senior SDM having 7+ YOE at Amazon - 1 Hour

• 3 Minutes Intro
• jumped to coding questions
• I was asked 2 LC-Medium questions
• First question was Binary Search Based. Identifying the Binary Search approach was very tricky here.
• I decided to create two functions which will be using a binary search. He helped me identifying when to call which function
• Handling corner cases is the most important thing in such questions. It requires some observation
• took almost 30-35 minutes (including dry run) also he was very friendly and we had a good discussion
• Question 2 -> array question
• I provided him O(1) space approach with linear time complexity
• He expected a sorting based approach and looked satisfied with my approach.
• Asked 2 LP Questions at last

Got a call after 3-4 working days about my final round.

Round 5 - Virtual Interview with Senior SDM - 1 Hour

• 2 Minutes Intro
• He looked in very hurry.
• Directly asked to solve 2 coding questions
• 1st Question - Stack Based LC-Medium question
• Explained brute force. Asked to optimize
•   He had some doubts, so asked to ry run the approach on given sample
• He Asked counter questions time and space complexites
• Wrote a clean solution and quickly explained and did a dry run on code
• Was able to solve this question in 15-20 minutes
• He moved to the next question
•   LC-HARD - Sliding Window, Hashmap based approach
• Clarified inputs / edge cases before proposing any solution
• I told him the approach and he asked to write a code for the same without asking much
• In between I was stuck in some places. As it was my final round I was bit nervous.
• Had a deap breath and took some smaple cases in which I had doubts and again started writing the code
• Finally explained my code and started dry running. In between he stopped me. He looked satisfied
• Without saying anything further, he directly ended the call with 10-12 minutes left.

Note :
- LC-Medium/Hard denotes the level of problems.
- In each round I clarified my doubts regarding problem statement. Discussed edge cases
before proposing any solution to the interviewer.
- Speak out laud while explaining, If you are taking a wrong route they will provide enough hints.
- Their expectation is that you should be able to solve 2 coding LC-Medium problems if they are directly jumping to the coding problems
- Don't loose hope. You will eventually succeed.
- Don't just run behind FAANG. Their are many companies who offer excellent compensation + learnings
- Don't cram DSA questions. Learn from Standard Questions and apply your learnings on similar questions, your focus should be on developing your problem solving skills.
- Use Leetcode disucssion section effectively.

Result : After 2 weeks, got a call about my selection.
Leetcode Count : 600+ Problems in 1 year.
Solved Problems on Codechef (Participated in contests), Hackerrank as well.