Status: New grad, B.Eng Software Engineering Canadian University
Position: SDE1 at Amazon
Location: Toronto, Canada
Date: December 10 2020
Interview process:

I applied on Aug 15th through the amazon website. Was notified through general amazon mass email. Didnt contact a recruiter. I have no internships but I do have projects and freelance work for a professor and a nonprofit.

Online assessment

Oct 15th - OA1 - Debugging (6/7 correct)
Oct 20th - OA2 - All test cases passed for both questions
Oct 25th - OA3 - Work Simulation

Nov 2nd - Got an email to book a date for 3 virtual onsite interviews I chose the latest date possible which was Dec. 10th
The interviews were through Amazon Chime and the code was written in an online IDE like the one on leetcode minus autocompletion and i dont think there was autoindent.

Virtual Onsite:

First Round

This round was great.

Behavioral question 1: Tell me about a time when you had a conflict within a team and what did you do?
Behavioral question 2: Tell me about a time when you overcame a challenge and how did you do it?

Algorithm Question:
A variation of https://leetcode.com/problems/sliding-window-maximum/ but instead return the max sum out of all the windows. I came up with a brute force approach and he asked if I could improve it to a linear solution.
After playing around with it on paper and some visualizations I was able to see a pattern that could be implemented with a queue. This question helped me with that https://leetcode.com/problems/moving-average-from-data-stream/. Interviewer was very happy with my solution.
Very nice person.

Second Round

This round was my favorite.

Algorithm Question:
The question was a given a chatroom transcript how would I go about finding the top 5 people who wrote the most words. Then he had follow ups like what if there were some messages to be ignored like system messages, or what if someone just types only special characters or no words. It was just an open ended question where we basically just had a discussion of how I would go about implementing the solution and what trade offs to make or different approaches to take to optimize for space per example.

Behavioral question: He asked me to tell him about a time I went above and beyond for a customer/client and asked me follow questions on the implementation details in regards to my answer

Third Round

This round left me confused.

Behavioral question: Tell me about a time you had a challenging deadline/time constraint and how did you tackle it?
Behavioral question: Tell me about a time you had a challenge and how did you overcome it?

Algorithm Question:
I was asked to implement a password validator. Like given a password return a boolean if its less 7 characters, has atleast 3 special characters and 2 digits. It was confusing because when I coded it he said my solution is not maintanble as more requiremnts are introduced. So i thought maybe he wanted a regex but it ended up being he just wanted a more organized, modular answer. Time was running tight so I implemented just in time. He mentioned there not being any more time to continue so I assumed I didnt finish the question

This round was confusing becuase I couldnt read the interviewer. Didnt know if my solution was sufficient, he didnt really show emotion. He was still nice though.

After

The next business day my application changed to moved jobs from vancouver to toronto and I recieved an offer a day after that!

Compensation
https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/973773/amazon-sde1-toronto-new-grad/791508

Overall feeling:

This was my first ever onsite interview. Contrary to what I read, the amazon interviewers were so accomodating and pleasant. I was very nervous and worried based on other stories. And all the interviewers were on opposite ends of North America, so it wasnt necessarily a location or team thing. I left the interview feeling very well about my performance but didnt let myself get cocky.

Preparation:
I did about 120 LC questions starting in late october. I did (but didnt complete) the learning explore cards and solved 81% of the amazon card. Overall I have solved 164 LC questions, 84 easy, 71 medium and 9 hard.

Mistakes I made
I listened to some misinformation on how leetcode doesnt help for interviews for it does not cement concepts but just teaches u solution. Thats its better to place priority on understanding concepts but its nonsense i tried to do coursera algo courses but fell alseep everytime. I would be in a much better position if I had just done leetcode since the summer. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face with an algorithm question. I started grinding Leetcode when the opportunity met me head on. Sure it worked out for me but I wouldnt recommend it and I wouldnt do it again.

Thank you leetcode and to the community, wouldnt have been able to do it otherwise.

Do not give up, dont even think about it, take extended breaks but do not ever give up, your breakthrough is coming

Feel free to ask any questions and ill answer to the best that I can