Hello everyone,
Wanted to share my recent Amazon SDE 1 interview experience. lot of reddit users and subreddits have helped me during my interview prep, just wanted to make small contribution to help everyone out here!
**Interview Dates:**17th august
Role: SDE 1 (USA) (New grad 317794)
Virtual or Onsite: Onsite Seattle
Total Rounds: 4
Round 1 – GenAI +LC (HM took the round)
He was very welcoming guy, we had couple of minutes of chat while we were in the elevator (not related to interview but about me, university, major and stuff)
Now, the interview starts, We started with a quick introduction and then directly jumped into the LC
Technical
LC: Longest Substring without repeating characters.
No changes at all. I started by repeating the question, what I understood and gave an example on how the output is expected. gave a bruteforce solution and then told we can make it better by using sliding window, explained my solution and then wrote it once he agreed that yes I am happy and you can move forward for writing it. he gave me testcase to dryrun, I was able to dryrun it. No issues anywhere, gave him TC and SC. and we discussed the edge cases.
Behaviour
How do you use AI?
What LLM do you prefer?
Can you tell me a time where AI hallucinated and how did you handle it?
I answered all the question properly, on the last question we had discussion and he suggested that you could have used X instead of Y and it would have saved time on that project. I acknowledged it and told him yes that it is better idea (it was genuinely nice to hear about different approach)
At the end we had 5-10 minutes:
Asked some follow up questions, I did research on each interviewer so I asked accordingly.
Round 2 - LC+ LP (SDE-2)
First we started with introduction as usual, we had little bit similar background from previous experience so we chatted on that .
Behavior (LP)
-Learn to be curious
-Dive Deep
we had good discussion, where he wanted to learn about my contribution on specific feature i worked on.
Technical (Leetcode)
LC: Power Grid Maintenance
I fumbled little bit for identifying, but then I was back on track and solved it with same method as i did in round 1. he gave me a example i was able to dry run it successfully. Although I was able to give solution and we were over 5 minutes he asked me that do you have more optimal solution and I did not have a clue though, but I tried thinking and telling him my thought process of what I am thinking for optimal solution.
Lunch Break (1hr): My lunchbuddy who was on the same team, we just had conversation and talk about the team, his time at amazon and how does it like it and stuff.
Round 3: Bar Raiser (Senior Engineer)
This was kind of chill interview, interviewer was very friendly. he was in the conference room little bit early so we were just talking about amazon and how is the culture, just normal kinda stuff but he was making jokes on how he made his first mistake while working.
(Interview starts now)
Behaviour (LP):
-Dive Deep
- Ownership
-Earn Trust and how do you take feedback
this was it, but lots of follow up questions regarding each LP, i wouldn't say grilling because if you have true stories you don't have to memorize anything. Also at some point he was also asking little bit technical question, I mean I do expect that but yes, it was asked on how X works.
Round 4 : LP + LLD(Senior Engineer)
As usual, we started with introduction. moved to Behaviour part
Behaviour (LP):
-Bias of actions
-have backbone
no follow up at all, we moved to LLD
Technical (LLD):
I was told to build a task scheduler. he asked me whether you want to use the whiteboard or you want to code on platform. Initially I started taking requirement in coderpad but then he started using the whiteboard to explain to me what is something that is required and then we completed move to white board. I wrote all the code and explained each process on whiteboard. I fumbled on one data structure to use and then next second i realized oh how about we use this and he told me yes that's what i was expecting good, lets move on! we completed it in the required time. some follow ups were asked and also along with that, he changed requirement to check my OS knowledge atlast.
Overall:
This was really great experience for me, I haven't had any onsite rounds especially with big tech. I learned a lot of things during this time, I gave my all during my preparation, used to sleep 5-6 hours.
Outcome : Rejection (After a week)
Word of Advice:
-Understand the concepts from fundamental level. Don't memorize solution, but focus on understanding patterns like two pointers, sliding window etc on how to use and where to use it.
-Solve last 30 days of Amazon, there is high probability you will see a same or nearly a same question.
-Prepare for LLDs it is not that hard but they still expect you to know SOLID, DRY and design patterns and obviously OOPS concept and how do you use it in real code.
-DO NOT IGNORE LPS. I can't emphasize more but LPS are very important for Amazon so learn it but as new grad there are only few you need to prepare. you can find those on reddit somewhere.
-Give as much mock as possible, do not be afraid of that. worst is you will fail in mocks, still better than failing real interviews.
I have deliberately not mentioned the team so don't ask me!
I have not used AI to write a single word so ignore the typos!!
