Amazon Interview Experience | SDE-1 | Offer

I recently interviewed for SDE-1 at Amazon and received an offer! Here’s my interview experience:

Round 1: DSA + Leadership Principles (LP)

• Structure: 1 DSA question + 1 LP question
• DSA Question:
  • Given a matrix consisting of 0s and 1s, count the number of islands (connected components of 1s).
  • Key Constraint: If there is a gap of only one cell between two islands, they should be considered connected.
  • Challenge: No extra space allowed.
  • Thoughts: The interviewer was strict about the space constraint and didn’t provide any hints.

Round 2: 2 DSA Questions + 1 LP

1. Implement Add & Remove Methods

   • Similar to an LRU Cache, but with some variations.
   • Follow-up: Optimize one method assuming the other is called less frequently.
   • Thoughts: Suggested some optimizations but ran out of time (~40 mins).

2. Story Points Problem

   • Given an array of story points for tasks, determine the minimum value of X (daily capacity) required to complete all tasks in Y days.
   • Follow-up: What if X is a floating-point value?
   • Thoughts: The interviewer kept asking me to find a bug in my code but later provided a test case where my solution worked correctly 😐. Felt more like a test than a discussion.

Round 3: Leadership Principles (LP) Based

Behavioral Questions:

1. Tell me about a time when you did something outside your responsibility.
2. Tell me about a time when you worked on something complex.
3. Tell me about a time when you failed to deliver.
4. Tell me about a time when you had to push back (not sure what this meant).

• Thoughts: I'm very bad at behaviorals. This round went trash. Don't know how I passed.

Final Thoughts & Onboarding

• I’ll be joining Amazon Hyderabad. If anyone recently joined, I had a few questions regarding onboarding. Please drop your LinkedIn below!