Amazon | SDE 1 | APR 2020 [OFFER] | Austin
Anonymous User
9878
Interview

Compensation
https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/595208/Amazon-or-SDE-1-or-Austin
Location: Austin, TX
AVG TC over 4 years: $ 167K

Status:

  • ~ 1 yr of full time SWE experience at a start up + ~ 1 yr of SWE internship & research experience during college
  • B.S. Computational Physics at Top Public University - 3.60/4.00 GPA
  • 254 Questions Completed - 57 Easy, 142 Medium, 55 Hard

Timeline:

  • March 3rd week - Amazon recruiter reaches out to me on linked in; Within 3 days, completed & passed OA and heard that I'll be moving onto virtual onsite
  • March 4th week - Date confirmed for interview prep call and virtual onsite
  • April 1st week - Interview prep call
  • 4/10/2020 - Virtual Onsite
  • 4/15/2020 (3 business days later) - Verbal offer from recruiter over the phone. Going into team matching ! :)
  • 4/23/2020 (6 business days after verbal offer) - Team matching succeeded. Offer letter received. Signed after negotiating compensation.
  • 5/11/2020 - On-boarding :)

Online Round :

  • 2 coding questions (90 minutes)
  • Explaining your solution and time/space complexity (15 minutes)
  • Work style / personality survey

Virtual Onsite (4 rounds, 1 hr each, with lunch break in the middle)

Round 1 (Hiring Manager)

Round 2 (Bar Raiser)

  • Knew he was a bar raiser because he was from an external organization and also was a phenomenal interviewer. Really enjoyed speaking to him.

  • 25 minutes of LP questions. He asked a lot of follow up questions and dove deep into my answers, which I appreciated.

    • Accidentally repeated one of my answers from the last round. Could have been avoided. Hoping this doesn't hurt me too much

  • 30 minutes of Technical questions

    Question 1: Leetcode Medium/Hard - Related to Array and String.
    - Had great interaction with the interviewer and felt as if I was collaborating with him. He set a very good tone for the interview.
    - Answered the question almost immediately after a few clarifying questions. He liked my answer and took him by surprise at the speed of which I came up with the question. He asked me if I had seen this question before.
    - After the interview, I realized I could have come up with a slight variation of my solution that would have been more optimized. I also realized I accidentally underestimated my time complexity because I was nervous. I don't know if these mistakes went noticed. - This let's you know that the interviewers aren't looking for "perfection." They are rather looking for someone with sharp mind and good culture fit.

    Question 2: Can't find anything similar to this on the internet. But he brought this up for discussion because we finished the 1st question sooner than expected.
    - Had good discussion

  • Overall, thought I aced this round.

Round 3

  • 20 minutes of LP Questions
  • OOD question, Design a music player.
  • Finished the question but I was short on time. Couldn't look over my code to find bugs. I had planned to come back to some parts of my code to optimize further after laying my foundations, but couldn't get to them.
  • Interviewer was a bit quiet during the technical portion. Wish he interacted with me more.
  • This was the most mediocre round for me based on my performance.

Round 4

  • 15 minutes of LP Questions
  • 35 minutes of Technical Questions
    • Question 1: Leetcode Medium/Hard - Heap question
      • Knew the optimal solution to this question. So took me very little time to come up with my answer
      • Aced all follow up questions
      • Finished earlier than the Interviewer had expected
    • Question 2: Leetcode Medium/Easy - Array question
      • Given to me because we had time left over.
      • Was able to devise an O(n) space O(n) time solution
      • Interviewer asked for O(1) space O(n) time solution as a follow up but couldn't answer it for the life of me (was frustrated with myself because I had studied this question before).
      • Interviewer gave me the answer at the end and told me I shouldn't worry about not being able to answer that question, as it was given to me only because we had extra time after the 1st question.
  • 5 minutes to ask questions
  • Thought I did well this round.

What helped me prepare

  • LEETCODE PREMIUM! Just buy it. It's so worth it. Amazon Interview Prep course under the explore tab really helped me strategize my interview prep. Want to also mention that I recently had a Phone Screen with Microsoft which I used the Microsoft Interview Prep Course, all of the questions I was asked were in the course. Leetcoded every day for a month leading up to the interview.
  • https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/437082/Amazon-Behavioral-questions-or-Leadership-Principles-or-LP Writing down Situation, Action, Tasks for notable career moments and rehearsing them using these questions.
  • RESEARCH Amazon is very specific in the way they interview people. It's very important to know what they are looking for in advanced and prepare your stories and technical skills to fit that agenda.

I achieved my goal. I cracked FAANG for the first time. All thanks to Leet Code.

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