Grateful to get an offer from Amazon! Unfortunately I can't share the specific problems, but they are all somewhere in the Amazon Leetcode list. A recruiter reached out to me, and I interviewed for the specific team.

Status: new grad, BS CS "high"-tier university, internship at finance company
Position: SDE-1 at Amazon
Location: Seattle
Date: April 20

Round 1: Hiring Manager

• A lot of LP questions.
• For a few of the projects I worked on, he asked me how I designed the architecture, my justification for the design, and what I would do differently.
• 15 min chat at the end.

Thought I did well. I really enjoy talking about my projects, so it felt very natural.

Round 2: PM

• All LP questions.
• 15 min chat at the end.

Thought I did good. The questions were standard LP but I felt myself getting tired of talking non-stop.

Round 3: Bar Raiser

• 25 min LP questions
• 25 min technical question. LC medium (DFS on matrix) and follow-up that's also LC medium.
• 10 min chat at the end.

My interviewer was the nicest interviewer I've ever had, 10/10 person. I thought I did well, though it was a bit challenging to do both the question and the follow-up within 25 min.

Round 4: SDE

• 25 min LP questions
• 25 min technical question. LC medium/hard string problem that uses DP/recursion
• 10 min chat at the end.

My weakest round. I solved the question but stalled a bit when analyzing the time/space complexity. I think I came up with the correct answer eventually, but it definitely didn't look good. I also couldn't gauge from my interviewer how well I was doing.

Round 5: SDE

• 15 min LP questions
• 35 min technical question. Relatively easy "return elements by frequency", but followed by how I would scale the code for very high volume.
• 10 min chat at the end.

The coding part for the technical question was not too bad — I've done a lot of questions with frequency maps and sorting. However, the system design portion caught me off guard, because suddenly I had to talk about horizontal scaling, load balancing, and caching. Luckily, I studied system design before the interview, and the interviewer seemed satisfied with my answer.

THOUGHTS ON THE INTERVIEW

• In the technical rounds, I got a surprising amount of LP questions, which meant less time for me to do the technical questions. Luckily, they weren't too difficult.
• My interviewers were so nice! Very positive experience.
• The turnaround time was super fast. I got the offer within a week after I interviewed.

TIPS

• There is a myth going around that you can't repeat answers to LP questions between multiple interviewers. This is definitely false and it makes no sense -- many LP have some sort of overlap, so it's fine if you have the perfect scenario for multiple questions.
• On the subject of LP principles, definitely study them. I read this Medium post very carefully, and it ended up being super useful. You don't need to memorize all 14 LP, but just come up with 3 or 4 scenarios that you could relate back to them and talk a lot about.
• When doing Leetcode problems, do NOT aim for a number, like 300 problems, for example. Quality > quantity. If you do not understand the algorithm 100% and cannot rewrite the solution from memory, then you did not do the problem. DON'T copy-and-paste solutions from Discuss. In fact, after you finish your solution, make your own Discuss post and write an explanation of your solution to solidify your understanding.
• I hate to say it, but studying the Amazon LC list helped a lot. Premium is worth it.
• I studied for the system design portion by reading the System Design Primer. I did all the practice problems and drew out their diagrams.
• Be sure you can talk aloud while coding, because it is actually very hard. Whenever I practice a Leetcode problem, I like to say my thought process aloud as if I'm in an actual interview. If you keep doing this, you will be a pro at communicating what you're doing in the real interview.
• Do many mock interviews. It's important to sound confident and excited. Many people I've mock-interviewed sound too nervous or shy, or they're just too quiet. Please, have some energy. I used P r a m p to practice and did around 10 mock interviews before my real interview . (Disclaimer: the link is a referral link, but I don't make any money -- the service is completely free)

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