Hi all, I just finished interviewing for the second time for the SDE 2 role at Amazon and wanted to share some thoughts on the process.

Background:

For this role, I applied online with a referral from a friend and the next day was reached out to. Note, I noticed that initially doing this with the old email I used for the first interview even with a referral I was getting denied. Once I changed my email and applied with a referral I got immediately reached out. Could be a coincidence but I think not.

I do not want to provide more information about myself so that I can actually describe the questions I got during these interviews.

Interview:

• OA Round

  • Number of islands, and redundant connections. I have done these before so it was quite simple.

• Final Round

  • All rounds consisted of half behaviral where they are trying to identify leadership principles. In terms of questions they are all posted on here, I will find the link but a quick google search will get you there as well.

  • First round: 2-3 behavioral questions followed by a coding question. The question was given a binary tree find a subtree within the binary tree that adds up to a certain target sum. I have done something like this before but I pretty much bombed this question. I had the right idea with what my approach was but I could not finish by the time the interview was over. Thus I am basically screwed now for an offer... oh well.

  • Second round: 2-3 behavoral questions followed by an OOD question. The question was a bit vague and I had a hard time understanding their english but essentially it was to design a wharehouse class that had certain constraints such that the particular wharehouse could only store certain products. I designed a products class, a rules class, and wharehouse class to incorporate all the constraints needed. I even went into polymorphism, using enum classes to store objects but they seemed to find my approach to complex. I tried to keep it simple and still built the structure such that you could identify which wharehouse could store a particular product but at the end their feedback was that they also wanted to me return a reason why a wharehouse could not take in a product. I do not rememeber them stating that but it would of been really easy by the way I designed my class to incoporate that in but alas that is what their feedback was.

  • Third round: This was with the hiring manager. 2-3 behavoral questions followed by a system design round. I was most nervous about this round because I come from a pure math background and I don't feel like my system design knowledge is super stong. Nonetheless I completely crushed this interview every additional question or follow up I have a way of handling the system so I personally thought this one went really well. The system design was to build a service such that when a user made a request it would return whether that user won or lost the game. The user is only making a request so no reads or writes to the request.

  • Fourth round: 2-3 behavioral questions. This was another coding round, which involved taking a string that say said "This sweater cost $40dollars."Theobjectivewastotakethatnumberandapplya20$32 dollars.". There was some other follow up questions and stuff but that was more oral. I completely crushed this question as well and all the follow up questions as well. He seemed happy with the solution.

Final Thoughts:

I am really trying to break away from the industry that I am currently working in and I have been trying to shift into tech as either a software engineer or machine learning engineer for over a year now. I probably studied 3 months for this interview on average 4-8 hours a day so I put in a lot of time into this. I failed at this interview before along with others at Facebook and Google. It is a difficult path to break into and I admire those that who finally get their dream job.

I personally think I will not get the offer because from my experience you either have to get everything perfect or you will fail. For me I can only say 2/4 interviews went perfectly thus I probably will get rejected. Alas, I do have another final round interview this August so I have another chance.

Best of luck to all in the process and rememeber to keep studying hard. Eventually with enough practice and devoted time we will get there. As a final note, I would really appreciate any feedback you have for me in regards to this interview experience and any advice you may have. I will try to answer any follow up questions you may have.

Update:

I had a call with my recruiter today and was told that I was strongly considered but regretably I will not be getting a offer. They would not go into more details but they said that I was close to reaching the bar to get an offer and suggested to re-inteview in about 3-6 months time. Personally, I am not suprised or disappointed, I did not nail every round perfectly and I think you need to nail at least 3/4 interviews (including system design). Good experience overall, I will be back and I have more final rounds coming August. Best of luck to all!