Status: Current employed.
Work experience: 4-5 years of total experience (Mobile engineer since the last 3 year)
Position: Was not told but probably SDE II
Location: Virtual Onsite (Seattle)

Online Assessment

1. Top N Buzzwords
   Variation: Do not count for the multiple instances of the same word in a single quote.
   Result: The interface said that there was a runtime error in one or more of the test-cases. I skipped and moved to the next problem.

2. Zombie in Matrix
   Variation: If all the elements in the matrix are not visited, return -1.
   Result: Passed all test cases.

Recruiter Call

Asked me about my experience as a software engineer and then about my work in my current role/company.

Then I was asked a few fundamental technical questions by the recruiter:

1. How do HashMap works?
2. What is the time complexity of each operation on HashMap?
3. What happens if you delete the root from a single node binary tree?
4. What happens if there is no base case in a recursion algorithm?
5. Explained me a scenario where a binary search was taking place and asked if I know what kind of search it was? And then was asked what is the time complexity of binary search?

LP questions:

1. Tell me about a time where your work had the biggest impact.
2. Tell me an experience where you were required to deliver on a tight schedule.
3. Tell me a time where you got harsh feedback and how did you handle it.
4. Why do you want to work for Amazon?

Virtual Onsite Interview Experience:

Round 1:

1. LP:
   1. Ownership
   2. Customer Obsession
   3. Invent and Simplify. Specific question: Tell me about a time when you gave a simple solution to a complex problem.
2. LRU Cache: https://leetcode.com/problems/lru-cache/
   Follow up: How would you go about designing a multithreaded LRU cache?

Experience: Sorry I don't remember the questions for the other two LPs but they were pretty standard. But the interviewer did respond positively on my answers. While coding, I was thinking out loud and he was following me on every line and gave me hints if any line had issues.

Round 2:

1. LP:
   1. Tell me about a time where you were criticized and how you handled it.
   2. More questions. Sorry, I don't remember.
2. Write an API for Linux find command. It was this exact question: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/369272/Amazon-or-Onsite-or-Linux-Find-Command

Experience: He appreciated the work I had done in the past. LPs went fine I guess. I probably nailed the OO API design question. He told me he liked my solution.

Round 3:

1. LP:
   1. Why do you want to work for Amazon and why this is the right time?
   2. Tell me a time where you missed a deadline.
   3. Tell me a time when you had a different view with the manager.
   4. Tell me about a time where you helped a peer who was struggling.
2. Design a recommendation system for Amazon e-commerce website
   Follow up (And the only question he asked me): What is more important for the system you designed, availability or consistency?

Experience: The behavioural section was gruelling and went for more than 30 minutes. And I bombed the system design part badly. I asked a couple of questions but I didn't get out of him the requirements of the system that would help me design it. So I went ahead and basically blurted out 'an ideal solution'. I tried to explain the design decisions I would take but the interviewer did not ask any questions on them. And this pretty much is the main reason that I didn't get the offer. There was no structure to my answer, so I don't think I really deserved an offer.

Round 4:

1. LP:
   1. Dive deep. Specific question: Tell me about a time where you had to dig deep to find out a bug/problem. Explain what you did and how did you fix it.
   2. Tell me a time where you had to contemplate between code quality and faster velocity.
2. A variation of meeting rooms: https://leetcode.com/problems/meeting-rooms/
   Given a list of meeting rooms and a meeting reservation request. Find if the reservation request can be fulfilled or not.
   Follow up: What if the list of meeting rooms is sorted?
   Edit: I found a similar one here: https://leetcode.com/problems/my-calendar-i/

Experience: While preparing for LPs, the question for 'deep dive' was the one where I had difficulty recalling any example in my recent experience. I tried and explained a relevant experience I had, but he did not buy it. He was clearly disappointed.

I got a call from the recruiter the very next day telling that they won't be making the offer.

Interview Preparation:
I gave the whole last month of my life in lockdown on preparing for the interview. I would work from 9-5 and prepare for the interview during the rest of the day. I also took some days off from work for this.

1. Coding:

   1. I solved a total of 180 problems: 71 Easy, 85 Medium 25 Hard
   2. I bought the premium to see the amazon questions and the locked questions.
   3. I made my custom lists of problems that were asked for the Amazon/ Amazon Seattle interview from past interview experiences.
   4. Solved some questions on InterviewBit and GeeksForrGeeks which were not on Leetcode.

2. Leadership Principles:

   1. Followed the advice that most people give here. I tried to come with two good examples from my recent experience for the LPs.
   2. There is probably a list on leetcode for common leadership principles questions. I mapped them to LPs and my answers.

3. System Design:
   I bought the groooking system designs interview course and watched some videos on Youtube. I don't have any recent experience with it and was expecting the interview to be some form of a discussion. But it didn't go the way I expected :(

Advice:
I think I should have spent as much time I spent for the coding interview on system design interview. The advice that I would give to myself is that I should do mock interviews for system design.