Details
Status: 3 YOE
Position: SDE2 (L5) at AWS
Location: Seattle, WA
Date: Mar 2022
Phone screen (1 hour):
- Behavioral questions
- Time you met a tight deadline
- Project you're most proud of
- Time you displayed ownership
- Algorithm question
- Longest palindromic substring
Onsite (4 rounds, 60min. each):
System Design - Design Facebook Messenger
- Behavioral questions
- Time you met a tight deadline
- Time you disagreed with manager
- Time you disagreed with colleague
- System design question
- Design Facebook Messenger/generic instant messenger service
Coding (OOP) - Design & Implement a Parking Lot
- Behavioral questions
- Time you met a tight deadline
- Project you're most proud of
- Time you changed a coworker's mind / had your mind changed
- Algorithm question
Coding - Build a Top 10 Movie List
- Behavioral questions
- Time you met a tight deadline
- Time you took on something you didn't know much about
- ???
- Algorithm question
- Given a list of people (and a corresponding list of their favorite movies) , build a sorted top 10 list based on the frequency of occurrences of that movie
- How would the algorithm change if the top 10 doesn't need to be sorted?
- Given a list of people (and a corresponding list of their favorite movies) , build a sorted top 10 list based on the frequency of occurrences of that movie
Coding - Merge K Sorted Lists
- Behavioral questions
- Time you resolved a conflict/issue with a coworker
- Time you did something that wasn't required
- ???
- Algorithm question
- Given an array of sorted arrays of integers, merge them into one cohesive, sorted array.
Offer (down-level)
L4 offer @ 226k TC
Notes
The down-level was understandable since I had bombed one behavioral interview. Wasn't expecting to receive so many duplicate questions! Definitely prepare multiple examples of a time you met a tight deadline because I was asked that in (almost) every single round.
The general advice is to not repeat stories so as to provide breadth to your experience. Definitely try to adhere to this, but if you get asked a duplicate question and don't have another example prepared, focus on answering the question being asked: repeat a story if you have to. Don't be like me and try to shoehorn a bad example into the question just to avoid repeating a story.
Aside from that, I thought the interviews were great. Everyone was friendly, the questions weren't too hard, and the recruiter and I had a constant line of communication open. Pleasant experience all around.