YOE : 5 years
I have recently been interviewed for amazon and got offer a week back. The interview process took around 3 months and the process was very smooth.
I was contacted by the recruiter around Feb, 2020 and completed 1 online assessment + 20 Quiz sort of Questions of LP, 2 coding Rounds, 1 system Design Round, 1 HM Round and 1 Bar Raiser Round. All of the rounds were virtual-onsite.
Details of the Rounds:
- Online assessment
It consisted of two Questions of graph problem (medium level). One was solved with BFS approach and another was with DFS approach then there were a lot of questions about Leadership Principles of Amazon and I needed to choose between strongly agree/disagree.
It went well and recruiter has also informed me that i have done well on the Leadership principles.
- 1st Round (2 Medium Level Problem)
There were two questions. One was a tree problem and another was related with HashMaps. Both the questions were of medium level and i have enjoyed this round very much as i was able to come up with the whole code in the give time constraint of 45 minutes.
In the technical interviews your speed of converting the algorithm to code matters a lot. As it will give a little window to go into discussions with recruiter and mark that extra point.
- 2nd Round (1 Medium Level Problem)
It was a sliding window problem but I have messed up this round really bad. But I was able to communicate whatever was on my mind very clearly. It helped me in keeping myself calm and solve the question in time.
Recruiter informed me that this interview raised question about your problem solving skills so do well in other rounds.
- HM Round
HM round was with a very senior guy at amazon. He started with two-three LP Questions first and then asked me about my current projects in the company. Then he grilled me on one part of the system and asked about what you would do to solve it. I have given a very naïve and non-scalable approach first and then optimized it.
Recruiter told me that everything was right but i need to come up with good examples for LP questions.
- System Design Round
The question that i have got was very popular one. But the interviewer twisted it a lot. I have practiced a lot of questions on system design with the online youtube channels and gro--king the system design course. I was able to answer everything and even proposed 5 solutions for a specific problem in span of 2 minutes. Recruiter was impressed and ended interview a lot earlier.
- Bar Raiser Round
Interviewer started with two LP Questions and then grilled on basic concepts like few thing about docker, distributed file system mostly what was used in my earlier projects. He asked a lot of behavioural questions mixed with technical solutions. He grilled me for 30 minutes. I have worked on a non-tech venture with one of my friend where i have done everything single-handedly (Andriod+ios app with Backed Panel) and in this round i have tried to highlight it.
I think it helped me in gaining some points then he asked me a DP question
I have solved it with O(n^2) complexity. But he told me to optimize it. I was clueless for a while and then asked for a hint. It took me 5 minutes to come up with an approach and code it. This round went well.
Suggestions:
Virtual-onsite is a boon. You get to know where you are going wrong and you can buy some time to improve it. So guys just prepare well and use this opportunity.
For Amazon Behavioural round matters and have weight of 40-60 in interviews, so prepare well. I have used google sheet to write answer of most important questions that i have got on internet.
I have solved 160 questions(60 Easy,80 Medium,20 Hard) on leetcode(non-premium) and a lot of questions on interviewbit (topic-wise). So try to be in good shape with your fingers because as i have mentioned earlier coding speed matters.
I am going through the interview process of Google too. Will update that in new thread.
compensation : https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/740419/Amazon-or-SDE2-or-Banglore