Amazon | SDE2 | Boston | Aug 2019 [Offer]
Anonymous User
18833
AmazonBostonInterview

Position: Senior Software Engineer
YOE: 12 years

Technical Phone Screen

  • Intro, behavoral questions, leadership principles (LP) - 10 mins
  • Coding question - 30 mins
  • Object-Oriented Design - 20 mins

Onsite Interview

  • Round 1:
    • LP (Leadership Principles) - 60 mins
  • Round 2:
    • LP - 30 mins
    • Coding question with follow-ups - 30 mins
  • Round 3:
    • LP - 30 mins
    • System Design - 30 mins
  • Round 4:
    • LP - 20 mins
    • Coding question with follow-ups - 40 mins
  • Round 5:
    • Coding question with more scalability-related follow-ups - 40 mins
    • LP - 20 mins

Disclaimer
Due to NDA and simply being ethical I won't reveal coding questions. All I can tell - none of them was LeetCode's labeled question or any LeetCode question whatsoever. In other words it's more a mixture of multiple questions, I solved 500 problems by the time.

My Story
I've been working for the same company for 10 years and had no idea what's the current interviewing culture is. As far as I remember, my previous interview for current company role lasted 15 mins back then. When I decided to try something new, my goal was as ambitious as Google, no less. I watched MIT lectures and read a few books. By the time I applied for Google, I solved only 50 LC problems and didn't pass the phone screening due to stupid DP problem, which I solved with memoization, but it wasn't enough for them. It was quite a shock for me, so I decided to get prepared for my next set of interviews in Facebook.

When time's come for Facebook interview, I have reached the point of 400 LC problems (350 FB labeled problems). It took me 3 months, it was a huge pressure and no life situation. I really wanted to change my life hard. I passed phone screening and had 6 rounds of interviews for L6. All of them were 100% LC problems, I solved 2 coding questions per round, but didn't pass.

It was a real moral hit for me. I was very upset as I didn't realize what went wrong. System design or behavioral? Do I have a bad fit personality for others? After some soul searching, I had to really put all of my shit together and just keep going to hell. In the end, I just realized that there must be some variables that are out of my control, considering so much preparation I've done.

I didn't try Amazon in a first place because I was a little skeptical about their Leadership Principles obsession. But I decided to siege another company just for the sake of interview practicing. I dedicated 2 weeks for looking back into my career and resume and prepare for each LP. I have around 50 elaborated examples evenly distributed across all principles. And I must admit this helped me a lot, considering that I had been answering those questions for 2.5 hours in total during my onsite interview.

What I learned about Amazon is that their LPs really work, we just never realize how powerful they are and common sense, until their are written in stone. I found that the company is nice fit for me, considering that most of my LP examples from the past perfectly matched their principles. Another thing I liked about Amazon is that they asked me about all of my projects in the end (through LP questions), I had an opportunity to show all my hard work done in the past. It wasn't only a coding questions, but OOD questions, that I enjoyed a lot. Comparing to Facebook interview process when they expect you to grind through coding questions, Amazon has a better process of finding people who really knows how to do the job.

Amazon folks think that leadership principles are important. Therefore, you also have to take them serious, if you want to work in this company.

Overall, my message is: I hope this will inspire some veterans to keep going and improving themselves. I know it is hard to change the job after so many years, but it is hard for everyone. We just have to prove a little more as we are expected to be experts with so many years of experience.

Q&A Update
I decided to list preparation materials, I mentioned in comments below.

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