5-April , 2021
I got a mail from amazon as I was referred by someone( linkedIn connection) for SDE-1 role. It was totally unexpected referral for me. Me with my friends have already booked tickets to goa because I was not expecting any referral.
Recruiter sent me the coding test just one week before goa trip, where I have to write code as well as approach and time and space complexity :
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/connect-n-ropes-minimum-cost/. Solved using min heap.
- https://aonecode.com/amazon-online-assessment-oa2-optimize-memory-usage . Solved using 2 pointer approach, and mentioned binary search approach also.
After passing all the test cases for both of the questions, I was expecting an interview call so I took laptop also with me to goa. I enjoyed first 4 days in goa, on 5th day, Friday , there were three rounds on Amazon Chime
Interview Round 1(Hiring Manager Round): First 40 minutes, we discussed my current company work, university projects, some behavioral questions like conflict with manager, conflict with colleagues etc.
Then he asked some tech questions
- Difference between REST and SOAP APIs
- Producer consumer problem
- What is virtual memory
- What is garbage collector, thread vs process.
I answered all the questions.
After First round Lan/WiFi of my Villa stopped working, so I went to the nearest Bar+Restaurant because Bar’s Wi-Fi was working fine.
Interview Round 2(DS/Algo Round): Taken by SDE-1
In first 10-15 minutes He asked my current company’s work and some behavioral questions. Then he jumped to coding problems
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/level-order-traversal-in-spiral-form/ .I gave two approaches one is using 2 stacks and another is using one deque. I was asked to write code for 2 stack approach.
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/value-to-be-subtracted-from-array-elements-to-make-sum-of-all-elements-equals-k/ .I was told to write a production ready code for all scenarios, solved this problem using binary search approach
Interview Round 3(DS/Algo round): Taken by SDE-2
My villa’s wifi started working fine for this round.
Interviewer asked me about my day, I told him that I gave second round sitting in a bar, he started laughing and appreciated my spirit. After a short introduction he jumped straight to the coding questions:
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/check-if-array-can-be-sorted-with-one-swap/. First I gave a O(n²) approach he told me to do it in O(n). I gave a quick approach, but it was failing for some cases, after 5-6 minutes of interactive discussion, I finally gave an approach, and it was working fine for all the cases. He told me to write a production ready code with meaningful variable and function names.
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/snake-ladder-problem-2/. First I told him that it can be solved using DFS or BFS. He told me to solve it using DFS. After trying for sometime I realized using DFS it is falling in ∞ loop, I tried for 10 minutes but couldn’t solve this using DFS. Then after 5 minutes of interactive discussion he told me that it can be solved using BFS.
Next day I returned to my home from goa. after not able to solve snack and ladder problem completely in last round ,I was not expecting next round interview call, but fortunately I was contacted by a recruiter that there is a final round after 5 days.
Interview Round 4(DS/Algo Round): Taken by SDE-2
- Interviewer was 10 min late, and He was the same guy who referred me for this role. After a small discussion he asked me some behavioral questions related to my university projects and current company work, I tried to explain him my current company work that how I am working on Single Sign On /OIDC protocol . But couldn’t explain him perfectly.
- Then he went through my resume and as I am 5* on Codechef, He asked me the most challenging problem I have solved on Codechef, at the time I was completely blank, then I told him about this( https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/allocate-minimum-number-pages/) problem that because of the Codechef I came to know that this can be solved using binary search instead of DP.
- Then He asked me to Write code for following problem: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/palindrome-partitioning-dp-17/
- I wrote the code using this (https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/palindrome-partitioning-dp-17/)O(n²) approach.
Result : Not Selected???? , technically I was good but was not best fit according to amazon leadership principles.
Hope this will help others. All the best !!! be Prepared for Leadership Principles.