Status: BS Chemistry (2015)\nPosition: SDE 1\nLocation: California\nDate: April 24th 2020\n\n**Background:**\nI was a chemist who dropped out of a PhD program and founded a company that made toys. \nWhen employees complained about being overworked, I learned C++ and robotics so I could automate production. \nAfter that, they didn\'t have to work so hard, turns out computer science is really fun!\n\n\n**Online Assessment:**\n2 questions from the curated list\nThe first question was really easy, but I couldn\'t optimal the second one. I missed a few test cases with the brute force solution.\n\n**Phone Screen:**\n2 leetcode easy questions with medium followups\nNot a bad experience, great guy!\n\n**Virtual Onsite:**\n\n**Round 1: Bar Raiser**\nQuestion that wasn\'t on the curated list, leetcode easy with followups\nVery fun interview with principal engineer as shadow. Both interviewers were funny and I learned a lot of cool information. We talked about NYC and NY life!\n\n**Round 2: SDE**\nLeetcode hard, question not tagged or on amazon list.\nVERY fun question, required making a custom trie data structure with a twist.\nI wasn\'t sure that a Trie was optimal, but I knew it would solve the problem, I think there could\'ve been a cheeky trick that would get better run time though, so I kept doubting myself. I\'m still not sure if Trie was optimal...\n\n**Round 3: Manager**\nOOD question, but I had prepared for System Design\nBombed this one, I felt really bad about myself. I thought I\'d ruined the whole interview and I was very very sad.\n\n**Round 4: Senior SDE**\nLeetcode easy with medium follow ups.\nWhat a super chill and cool interviewer, I didn\'t tell him during the interview, but his setup was really nice. He had a really cool sense of aesthetic and immediately made me feel relaxed after my bombed OOD interview. I really hope I can meet him again because he was so chill!\n\n\n**Preparation:**\n* 86 Leetcode Questions: constantly reviewed the same questions to get them optimal and tried as many python one-liners as possible\n* Read every single tagged Amazon SDE post in interview experiences until I could do 95% of their problems\n* *** sessions\n* Grocc System Design\n* An amazing mentor and friend :)\n* Watched all TechLead videos\n* Watched a few Dan Croitor videos\n* Watched all SuccessInTech videos\n* Memorized lots of optimal solutions like Catalan Number for all possible BT permutations. \n\n\nThe most useful resource was these interview experiences. I learned a lot more from the REJECTS than the OFFERS, because I noticed that the mindsets and experiences for the offers were really similar. You could tell that they obviously just prepped really hard. However, the rejects were really diverse and there were a LOT more lessons to be learned from what didn\'t work, and which questions were really hard.\n\nOffer came 8 days after virtual onsite!\n\n187k TC + 2k shares first year + 7k relocation = 196k TC?\n

Status: BS Chemistry (2015)\nPosition: SDE 1\nLocation: California\nDate: April 24th 2020\n\nBackground:\nI was a chemist who dropped out of a PhD program and f