Background :
MS Computer Engineering
~ 2 years professional experience
Solved ( 480 as at time of Onsite) ~ 160 Easy, 270 Medium, 50 Hard
A recruiter reached out to me on linkedIn sent a link for OA.
The OA consisted of 2 coding questions then 2 essay like questions about the runtime complexity of the coding solutions.
The first question was reorder log files just worded differently https://leetcode.com/problems/reorder-data-in-log-files/
The second question was on Demolition robots similar to https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/347457
The recruiter contacted me the next day and scheduled a phone interview which lasted about 30 minutes and was exclusively behavioural. I was then scheduled for a virtual onsite in 2 weeks.
A week before the onsite, I and a few other candidates had a prep call with a recruiter and we were told what to expect. It was going to be four rounds of interviews. One of which was going to be all behavioural and the others behavioural/technical. Suprisingly, there would be no system design round. I practiced with Leetcode premium. Solved all Amazon explore card and all mock interviews and was feeling fairly confident.
The virtual onsite eventually came:
1st round:
Behavioural questions: All situtaional based on Leadership principle. It went well as I had prepared 3 examples per Leadership principle or at least I thought it went well.
2nd round: First 25 minutes was also behavioural, then a question on phone numbers similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/letter-combinations-of-a-phone-number/ . This also went well. Was able to code the solution quickly and answer follow ups.
3rd round: Was interviewed by someone from a different team so I guess this was the bar raiser. Similar format to the previous but the behavioural was slightly shorter(About 20 minutes). Then a coding question.
You have a parking lot with a capacity. Cars come in to book space for a specific duration. Write a code to get the estimated wait time for a car about to enter the parking lot.
Easily came up with a working solution were you store the leaving time(arrival timeStamp + booked duration) in a priorityqueue and was able to answer the follow ups
4th round: This was with two interviewers. One of them was shadowed. Similar format to the previous. Started with leadership principles for about 20 minutes, then coding queston
Design a card game that consist of 30 cards with values 0 - 9 and colours R, G and B. The card randomly distributes 3 cards to players at the start then declares the winner based on some rules in the following priority;
All cards have same colour
All cards have same value
2 cards have same value
This was also straight forward to code and I answered the follow ups.
I left the interview really confident I was going to get the offer however I got a reject email a couple of days later and which also said they don't provide specific details about the interview for each candidate. Now not sure specifically what I could have done better. Hopefully I would have better luck next time.
Some useful links for Amazon LP Prep:
Some questions asked I had already seen them here
https://louiscarter.com/amazon-leadership-principles/