Amazon | SDE1 | Seattle | Sep 2019 [Offer]
Anonymous User
3191

Let this be a prime example that it is all about you as a person, and your problem solving abilities, and not your coding abilities.

I got through with an employee referral. I signed an NDA so will not disclose too much information.

Round 1: Online assessment
2 questions, both may be found online, LC easy. 15/15 test cases passed on one, 11/13 on the other (right solution, incorrectly ordered output. problem did not specify tho)

I applied on a Sunday, got the assessment on Monday afternoon, completed it on Tuesday afternoon, and got invited onsite next day for 2 weeks later on a Thursday.

Each interview was 1 hour long.
2 LP only rounds and 3 coding rounds.

Onsite Round 1: Bar Raiser

2 interviewers. I was asked only Leadership Principle/Behavioral questions.
"Tell me about a time XXX"

Onsite round 2
This guy was pretty cool. Got through LP in about 10 minutes and we talked for a few more about our common interests in teaching.
Had the interviewer laughing a lot.
Coding: I discussed several approaches the the problem, each with different time complexities. Ended up with a O(1) time complexity solution he was happy with. I covered the followup questions adding one line of code. Solution was similar to what you might find in a O(1) LRU cache.

Onsite Round 3
Lunch. This was neat. Got to walk around campus a bit and learn about the city. Cool guy.

Onsite Round 4
LP maybe 15-25 minutes.
Coding question was binary tree involving finding different paths in the tree fitting certain qualifications. I got the optimal solution here but explained the time complexity wrong. something like "Since we have to iterate over all the nodes, its logn" but I think she grasped what I meant as O(n) and passed me.

Round 5
This interviewer was also awesome! Came from a similar background to me so we had a lot to talk about. Got through LP in 15 minutes, and after the coding problem we talked for a good while about our interests. Went over by 6 minutes. Opps!
Coding problem: This coding problem was... strange. Never seen anything like it. I knew the optimal solution would be a Trie (well maybe optimal, looking back it may not have been), and told her this. I also mentioned how I have never actually coded a trie before. "So I've never actually coded or worked with a trie before.... I've read about them though. If you want, I can give it a crack and see where we end up?" I fumbled through this the entire time. Got a working trie structure. Well mostly. Wasn't great. I also answered half of her question only, and that half had many bugs we were working through.

What stands out here is that I think she appreciated my "go get em" attitude for tackling something I didn't know how to solve, and getting a working, partial solution. I was chuckling through it the whole time, ans had her giving pointers. I also was able to point out all the possible areas in my code for errors, and what to do to solve them. Never gave any information about complexities.

Round 6: Hiring Manager
Just like the bar raiser. Questions about LP. Went overtime by 10 minutes or so. I had a lot of questions about how Amazon runs things, and she was happy to answer them. Great interview!

Afterthoughts

All in all, I didn't code too great, but I showed that I am a problem solver. I think this is what Amazon looks for. I also think I had an advantage in that the LP's are something that describe me and how I work anyways, I fit perfectly into them and they saw that.

My LP prep went like so: I wrote down a couple situations and gathered my thoughts. I made sure each LP was accounted for in at least one of my stories. When asked a situation, they typically say to follow STAR format, but I kind of forgot to do that and just went with the flow. The interview was very conversational. I was just myself during the interview and they appreciated it. I asked questions to them as ice breakers like "What type of book would you recommend to me?" or "Why do you get up and go to work in the morning?" I also asked many of the typical questions you should, and dived deep into them. I asked a lot about mentorship and learning opportunities, and different opportunities for me to reach out and teach. I wanted to make sure Amazon was right for me, and not just me right for them, so I went pretty deep on some of the questions I asked.

offer ended up at ~150k TC <1 related yoe, 1.5 year total professional experience

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