Amazon
february / march
Online Assessment
Two questions from the list on https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/344650/Amazon-Online-Assessment-Questions
- Medium heap solution
- Hard graph problem
Moved directly to onsite after online assessment
Onsite (amazon chime)
4 rounds of technical
All started with 20 - 30 minutes of LPs
- medium stack question
- Hard graph problem
- System design (with a TPM i believe?)
- medium array problem
recieved great feedback and heard a week later I got the job.
Prepare for LPs according to https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/437082/Amazon-Behavioral-questions-or-Leadership-Principles-or-LP/397167
prepare lot's of examples and for think of tough follow ups to the questions. Show ways you've marketdly improved yourself since your past failures. Remember that each interviewer only looks for a particular LP.
Amazon will always ask a graph question it seems.
Apple
February - March
Applied online to 20 teams, heard back from one.
Phone Screen
- Was with a random engineer
Talked about a unoptimized DP problem. (FIll in the blank). Had a small follow up
Asked about deeper questions into my background and other short technical quiz like problems mostly related to databases - Was with the hiring manager
Talked a lot about team scope and problems they might face. Was asked a unix shell command problem and how else I write about it.
Onsite (webex)
7 rounds
- Design a system related to the team
- OS + some coding problem
- string + system design
- Hiring maanger (all behavioural) (cross functional team questions, nitty gritty about background and approach to problems I would face in the team)
- senior manager (hard behavioural)
- System design related to the team (heavy emphasis on data models and normalization here)
- String + system design
After the onsite I was asked to speak to another person high up in the company. Asked about my previous experiences and why apple.
Rejected a week later, probably they're cutting back hiring? Also didn't ace the OS questions.
Prepare for questions about why apple and your improvements to particular devices. Tbh Apple is team based hiring so my experiences probably aren't very useful to others.
All the leetcodes were really easy questions, but the team I had tried to add small twists and see your approach in a way that would suite how the team handles problems.
October / november
Applied to enterprise engineering role in Singapore via referral in October
Recruiter Screen
Simple questions about timelines and why FB
Phone Screen
1 round with a senior manager
Two quick easy questions related to arrays and strings
No behavioural
Scheduled onsite almost immediately afterwards, recruiter gave me two weeks to study
Onsite
- Split over two days due to scheduling conflicts
3 coding rounds (2 questions each) + 1 system design
Questions
- Medium binary tree
- medium binary search
- medium binary search
- medium array based question
For the binary search ones, if you use a proper template and can do rotated array and mountain array you'll be fine. FB seems to always have binary search questions
System Design
Design facebook newsfeed. Reading the guide that everyone always recommends to prepare. Interviewer in particular dug deep into items I liked. Don't be afraid to cover all features, just focus on the ones you know you can do well on and show your depth and ability here.
Behavioural
Tell me about a time you dealt with conflict
Tell me about your favourite technical project
Honestly nothing too hard
Afterwards one quick tree questions
was rejected shortly afterwards.
Overall super grateful with the lovely recruiters, and how well they prepared me at each time. I was super nervous with this one and drank too much coffee before one of the interviews. If I had to change anything was that I would calm myself down a lot more and lookup the most common facebook questions more.
Shoppe
february / march
applied via referal to ML team
Online
Super easy. Didn't even have tests cases. Creepy they needed your camera and screenshare though.
Phone Screens
Two rounds
- easy array / matrix based question. Then quizes on ml concepts and approaches
- easy matrix question, follow up on bfs / dfs details and python language details. Quiz questions on ml details
Hiring Manager followed up a call after I did well on the second interview. He was honestly very aggressive and asked strange questions that were not all very prepared.
Shopee also requires you to submit your salary before getting an offer.
ByteDance
Applied once in october, and once again in early february
Both times be preared for an interviewer to ask you everything in chinese only.
- Hard array question + math style question + one array sorting style question (all in 45 minutes)
- Deep dive into technical background, some questions on design patterns
- Quick questions on langauge details + one linked list question
- more language questions + one medium array question
Hiring manager
Asked about background and general tech skills. Quick question on arrays. Was super aggressive and did not leave me much room to question his choices.
Felt lost generally in the process. I showed up to the first onsite without even knowing it was an onsite (recruiter never called me or specified what the interview was for). Last interviewer even bailed on me and left me sitting there for an hour.
Bytedance seems to ask you "quiz" styled questions about langauge specifics. These you either know or you don't. Eg. how does java handle concurrency. What's on the inside of the JVM. How do you invalidate browser cache.
Grab
January via referral
Skipped to onsite
- System design for internal system
- medium array style question
- deep dive on background and related topics
recieved a verbal offer that was quickly rescinded
Preparations
- International Candidates should adjust their sleep schedules waaay ahead of their onsite interviews, this helped me a lot and got me a lot of sympathy points I reckon from my interviewers in the US.
- I did a bit over 200 LC (mostly mediums)
- Practised daily after FB rejection, signed up for all the mailing lists of questions and did them as they came out
- Meditated for 20 mintues just before each interview to calm myself down
- Prepare some interesting questions for engineers if you know the team, it really shows your interest in the subject matter
- Stay strong and positive everyone, I know you guys can do it!!