Status: 10 months experience in Product Based Company
Position: SDE1 at Amazon
Location: Bangalore, India
Date: 28th April 2020
Step 1: Call from Recruiter
Got Call from a Consulting Company who found me via my profile in naukri.com regarding an opportunity with Amazon. Asked a bit info about my profile and notified me about my selection of Online Assessment round and shared an email about the Job Description and told that I will be getting a link in a week or so. I got the test link after 1 week.
Step 2: Online Assessment Round - 15th March 2020
The test was on the Amcat Platform.
- 2 coding questions (up to 90 min)
- Describe your approach with space and time complexity for the 2 questions (up to 15 min)
- A work style survey (up to 15 min)
- A feedback survey (5 min)
- One question was similar to Number of Islands
- Another question was similar to Articulation Points in Graph https://leetcode.com/problems/critical-connections-in-a-network/
I had managed to solve both questions with all test cases passed. I got a call from the HR from Amazon after 2 weeks that I will be having Virtual Interviews and links will be shared 1-2 days before. But due to this Covid-19 crisis, the Interviews were postponed 2 times. And finally interview date finalized for 28th April, 2020.
Links used for Virtual Interviews.
https://livecode.amazon.jobs/
https://app.chime.aws/meetings/
Suggestions:- Try to put as many comments as needed. And in the survey try to write the approach correctly.
Step 3: Virtual Round 1
This round was taken by Senior Manager at Amazon with experience of about 9+ years. Started with introduction and asked about my current project for about 10 mins. After that jumped to Problem Solving.
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The question was similar to Generate Parentheses
Soon I came with the recursive approach and discussed my approach with the interviewer. After the discussion he told to code it. I wrote the full working code along with time complexity and space complexity discussion. -
After that he asked one variation of the above problem. So instead of having one type bracket we are given all 3 types of brackets and asked to generate the valid parentheses.
Soon I came with the recursive approach with a modification of my previous approach. After that he slightly changed the question and told there will be priority assigned to each bracket for validity. I was kind of stuck after this modification of the question he was giving hints in the middle and we have some discussion of the possible approach to solve it but I was not able to solve it fully. -
Then he gave me the Solution approach and further extended the question for n-brackets. We did some discussion for the approach to questions and then he moved on to some Leadership Principle Questions and Behavioural Questions.
Leadership Principle Questions and Behavioural Questions
- Why do you want to join Amazon?
- Why do you want to leave the current organisation?
- Have anyone in your present organisation told you about your weakness? And what you do to improve it?
Finally, He asked me if I have any questions. After that, he wished me the best of luck for the next round.
Suggestions:- Try to always talk out a-loud your approach, interviewers want to know your approach. Always try to indulge in discussions with the interviewer they are very helpful. They give hints time to time if you are stuck.
Step 4: Virtual Round 2
This round was taken by SDE-2 at Amazon with 3+ years experience. After the introduction, he told in the beginning itself that we have 1 hour and he will ask two DS/Algo questions.
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This Question I have not seen in any platform. So I will be giving the question description. We have been given a string with parenthesis and characters in between. The parenthesis can be invalid also if it's invalid we have to return -1 and if it's valid then we need to find the maximum depth of the brackets.
For eg. let s = "((((X))(((Y)))))" Output will be 5 in this case
The string can have characters in between the brackets and it can be without characters in between also. I gave him the approach and after the initial discussion, he told me to optimize the space for validity checking of the brackets. After more discussion, I came with an optimized approach and he told it to code it. I wrote the code along with the time and space complexity. -
This question was similar to LRU-Cache
After discussions about the question, I told him my approach to solve the question. After some deep discussions of the approach, he told me to implement it. I wrote the code along with the time and space complexity.
Suggestions:-
- Always try to write time complexity and space complexity. At Amazon, they emphasize these things so please have an understanding of these things beforehand.
- Try to write the production level code. Don't write pseudo-codes.
Result
Within a few hours, I received an email from the recruiter stating that they had decided to not go further with my candidature.
Notes
This was the 3rd time in the past 1 year I have been after Amazon interview. Still, I am trying to do Leetcode questions daily as practice is the key. I will try to post my preparation strategy for Amazon interviews soon.
Links I used before interviews
- For Leadership Principles - https://medium.com/@scarletinked/are-you-the-leader-were-looking-for-interviewing-at-amazon-8301d787815d
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLucmoeZjtMR990BPePcn5WgoCM_OX0YB - Previous interview experience Questions:- Try to solve all these questions these are very helpful. https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/488887/amazon-final-interview-questions-sde1
Thoughts after giving 3 interviews
Practise is the key. If you get rejected from these big companies don't get disheartened companies have many factors for there selection criteria. Just try to improve every day with Data Structures and Algorithms on LeetCode. Never Give UP :).
This was my first post of LeetCode. Please share your thoughts and opinions for improvement.
Update : Thanks you all for your support and appreciation for my 1st post on LC. I will update my experiences with other companies also that I gave interview in past 1 year. :) Stay blessed you all.