Status: ~4 YOE
Position: SWE at Non-FAANG
Location: EU
Date: March 2022
OA (90 mins):
2 coding questions on Hackerrank, could pass all the test cases.
First Question - Q1 of https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/1733741/amazon-oa-sde-intern
Second Question - https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/1729637/amazon-new-grad-role-2022/1246587
Followed by MCQs of System Design and behavioural type questions.
Got a mail that I passed OA in 2 days. Schedule phone screen for a 3 weeks later date.
Phone screen (60 mins):
https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience/1861159/aws-l5-phone-screen-eu-march-2022-passed
Got a mail that I passed Phone screen in 2 days. Scheduled onsites for a 2 weeks later date.
Onsites:
All 4 rounds happened on same day.
Round 1 (HLD 60 mins):
Kind of similar to Design Instagram, but with some lesser functionalities and more implementation level details of APIs, requests, responses, server side code etc. were expected.
Did well but not sure as Interviewer (SDM) didn't say much.
Round 2 (LLD 60 mins):
LLD / Modelling of 'Push the Box' puzzle game (Google if you haven't heard of it). Was asked to code methods for two things: first, validating a move; second, updating the game status after a valid move.
Did well but again not sure as Interviwer (SDE 2) didn't express a lot or cross question me.
Round 3 (DSA 60 mins):
Problem was heavily Amazonised. In simple terms it was about parsing a log of file of customer activities with timestamp and returning the count of repeat customers defined by customers who were active on more than one day.
Did pretty well and Interviewer (SDE 2) seemed happy.
Round 4 (DSA 60 mins):
Again the problem was heavily Amazonised as in find nearest delievery center for Amazon truck driver or something. Very similar to this problem https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-path-to-get-food/. But have to return result in a 2D array, with every possible start point and shortest distance for that point.
I initially suggested brute force way and code that out. After that I told an approach of finding shortest distances using BFS from each food point for every other possible point. Interviewer (SDE 2) was happy with that but we didn't have time to code it.
Behavioural questions / Leadership Principles (LPs) questions:
Every single in-person round roughly had behavioural questions for half of the time ie roughly 2-3 questions per round. Out of total 5 hours of interview 2+ hours were spent on discussing these stories. Every question was from this list https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/1905738/amazon-behavioural-questions-leadership-principles-based-questions-list-short-and-concise.
Notes:
- DSA wise questions weren't tough, max LC Medium type. Practicing all regular DSA problems like from Blind 75 list is enough.
- Normal practice of HLD and LLD is sufficient. I followed YT channels like GKCS, CodeKarle etc and resources like Gro**ing.
- Preparing LP Hards is way more important than LC Hards. By LP Hards I mean good detailed behavioural stories as per the above mentioned list. They dig you deep with many follow ups. Have min 10+ unique stories ready. Even if same question is asked tell some different story. That's what they expect. Stories should not be vague, ie state all stakeholders involved, use STAR format, quantify the results with data or concrete achievements, describe technicalities involved.
- DSA problems were heavily Amazonised and vague, ask a lot of clarifying questions to make sure you understand it well. It will boil down to some known LC problem only.
- As roughly half of the duration of an interview would be about behavioural questions, keep in my mind that you just have roughly 30 mins for the technical part (design or coding).
Hope this helps. All the Best. Waiting for results.
Update: Passed