Hi guys,
I have learnt a lot from the leetcode community and would like to share my interview experience as well. Sorry for the late post though!
Status: New grad, MS from top 50 CS school
Position: SDE1 at Amazon
Interview Date: 15 Jan 2020
Interview Timeline
Applied in September 2019, completed all the OAs and received the passed OA mail by mid October. Received the email to schedule the interview in mid-December 2019. None of the dates worked for me due to conflicts with my final exams, asked to reschedule the interview. Sent a mail to the recruiter in mid-January 2020 to ask when should I expect the interview scheduling mail to arrive. (I was getting anxious since I was a December Grad). To my surprise, the recruiter schdeuled my interview in the next week. It was a 3 round virtual interview.
OA
Standard new grad 3 OAs. Questions asked in OA2 are:
Virtual Interviews
- Round 1 - LP questions, Technical question - Find Median from Data Stream. I discussed different approaches before writing the code. I had solved this question previously so knew it could be optimally solved through heaps. The interviewer seemed okay with the final solution. The interviewer took a lot of notes during the LP session
- Round 2 - LP questions, Technical question - Number of Islands. I solved it using DFS and modified the input array, then interviewer asked to solve it without modifying the input array. I used set and coded the solution as well. The interviewer didn't seem much intereseted. He seemed to be doing other work while I was coding.
- Round 3 - LP questions, Technical question - OOP Desgin - design class to take a deck of cards and write methods to shuffle the deck, get the card from the top of the deck. The interview was led by a Senior Engineer and a new Engineer in the Graphics Department was observing. I discussed different designs and implemented the one. There was a follow-up question, I modified my solution and implemented it as well.
Result
I was told I would get the result within 7 business days. It had been around 14 business days and I still didn't recieve the result. I emailed the recruiter with a follow-up and was told they are still working on getting my feedback from the interviewers. The following Monday got a Rejection email.
I was extremely disappointed as I was fairly confident of my performance and practiced most of the Amazon tagged questions and made great use of the leetcode premium as well. I reflected on my performance again - maybe my LP stories weren't good enough, maybe I wasn't a good culture fit, maybe it was just a bad luck - there was no way for me to know. So, I did the next best thing - move on, life happens.
I know that I have improved my skills greatly (Thank you leetcode and its community) while doing the prep. The experience has made me stronger mentally, emotionally, behaviorally, technically ;) . I am ready for the next big opportunity waiting for me!
If you were able to read this long post, thank you for reading it. I hope it may have helped you in one way or the other. To anyone who is still looking for a job, don't fret, it's just a job at the end of the day. The right job will come along. In the meantime, don't forget to talk to your loved ones and enjoy the life and this rollar-coaster ride of job-hunting. Good luck, I hope you get success soon!