[NDA] Amazon | SDE1 | London | Feb 2020 [Offer]
Anonymous User
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AmazonLondonInterview

Status: New grad, BS Engineering Top 20 school UK
Position: SDE1 at Amazon
Location: London, UK
Date: 22nd January, 2020

Timeline

Since there are already many posts with information on the OAs, I'll just give the dates and brief explanation

Applied: Early October
OA1 Invite: 1 week after applying
OA1 completed: Mid-October (Basic coding debugging)
OA2 Invite: 2 days after completing OA1
OA2 completed: Mid-to-late October (2 medium LC q's on Amazon's Interview Questions post + some q's for LP)
OA3 Invite: 3 days after completing OA2
OA3 completed: Early November (job simulation to ensure you get their LP- Leadership Principles)
OA3 successful e-mail: Mid-November
Invite for Onsite: Early December
Onsite Interview: Mid-January (Due to scheduling issues, I could not attend before; The recruiter was very nice and understood)

Onsite Interview (3 rounds)

I signed an NDA so don't want to say too much.

My onsite day has 3 interview rounds of 1 hour each, where half of the time concerned LP questions and the other half coding questions. The main topics on the coding questions were: BST, Backtracking, DP and Design. There was an element of design in almost all questions.

Result

After sitting my onsite, I did not hear back for 2 weeks and the online job status did not change (and it still hasn't). I received an e-mail exactly 2 weeks and a day after (on a Thursday, hence confirming what most people say about decisions being made on a Wednesday) saying I have an offer).

Job Offer/Perks

I was offered a very good job salary, sign-on bonus and stock options.
Start is flexible between July and October 2020.
Don't know yet about team allocation.

Preparation for Coding Part

Honestly, it was a hard process, not Amazon in general (their recruiters were very nice and the process is very straightforward) but applying for jobs and preparing with LeetCode. Not coming from a CS background, I was not as familiar as other people on CS concepts, so really had to work hard on LC everyday and learn a lot.

I'd say there's a learning curve. I started LC in early September and was very disciplined for the first month and a half (but also struggling a lot since it was the beginning), and then when job applications started, it became a bit harder to organize my time, especially with university deadlines.

The LC community really helped, particularly when I did not know a solution to a particular problem and someone gave their coding solution and a thorough explanation. This really helped me build up my algorithms' and techniques' knowledge, and then apply it to other problems.

The resources that really helped me for coding preparation were:

  • LeetCode solutions by other users
  • "Cracking the Coding Interview" (particularly for complexities, exercises and concepts; I used it a lot at the start of the process)

Preparation for Leadership Principles (LP) part

I wrote 2 stories for each LP and practiced them with a friend everyday for a week before my interview. I had about 19 stories as some questions/answers fit many LPs.

By seeing all the Interview Experience post's, I was able to compile a list of all LP q's previously asked and tried to answers as most of them as I could in my stories (some answers apply to multiple questions if lightly tweaked).

Useful resources for LP part of the interview:

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