Hi LC friends, I just received an offer from Amazon for a SDE1 position. I want to help one another by sharing my experience, feel free to ask me any question.

Background:

1. Bachelor of Computer Science
2. ~1 YOE Full time in Data Science and Data Analysis
3. Before that, 3 internships in Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Data related roles

Timeline

• 2021-04-12: Applied the Job
• 2021-05-03: OA Received and Cleared
• 2021-05-26: Virtual Onsite Received
• 2021-06-21: Virtual Onsite
• 2021-06-28: Offer Received

Online Assessment

Amazon Fresh Deliveries
Given allLocations list of co-ordinates (x,y) you have to find the X - closest locations from truck's location which is (0,0). Distance is calculated using formula (x^2 + y^2). If the there is tie then choose the co-ordinate with least x value. Output list can be in any order.

Sample Input :

allLocations : 
[ [1, 2] , [1, -1], [3, 4] ]
numOfDeliveries : 
2

Sample Output :

[ [1, -1], [1, 2] ]

Solution:
This question was basically to find the K closest points to the origin (0,0) and with addtional conditions to break the tie, solved by using a heap.

Demolition Robot
Given a matrix with values 0 (trenches) , 1 (flat) , and 9 (obstacle) you have to find minimum distance to reach 9 (obstacle). If not possible then return -1.
The demolition robot must start at the top left corner of the matrix, which is always flat, and can move on block up, down, right, left.
The demolition robot cannot enter 0 trenches and cannot leave the matrix.

Sample Input :

[1, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 0],
[1, 9, 1]]

Sample Output :

3

Solution:
Solved by using BFS, made modifications on the given map to use it as a cache, otherwise the time limit will be reached.

Virtual Onsite

4 rounds of mix behaviour and coding questions on the same day. (Recruiter told me that only three rounds will contain coding questions and it was clearly not what happened LOL.)

Round 1

1. Like the Wheel of Fortune game of 1 word phrase. Write a function to guess a word. Given the word length and a helper method which will take a letter and returns a list of indexes the letter, empty if the letter doesn't exist in the word.
2. Some Innovation and deadline related BQ.

Round 2

1. An OOD version of 692. Top K Frequent Words. Rank the top most frequent hashtags. Given two classes, Friends and Posts and find the most K popular tags from posts amoung all friends.
2. Some Customer Obssession BQ questions.

Round 3

1. Design a forum class (failed badly, beacuse I thought there weren't gonna be another coding question since the next round will be with 2 Engineers).
2. Deadline, Negative Feedback and Conflict Related BQ questions.

Round 4

1. Implement LRU cache from scratch (exactly like 146. LRU Cache, implemented with doubly linked list)
2. Some questions on my resume.

Notes

1. Behavioral: Prepare 3+ answers for the most popular questions. I didn't prepare well on my BQs, and I pretty much used 60% of my answers in my first round. Please don't be me and you should take more time to prepare on BQs.
2. Coding: Go through the most common questions on LC, also hackranks.