4 rounds of interview
1. Hacker Earth problem solving
2. Technical Interview
3. Technical Interview
4. Technical Managerial Interview
Data structures and leadership principles touched up in all the three interview rounds.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
LPs on prior experience and DSA problem solving questions.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2024
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter who said I could be a potential fit. Was required to complete OA which had 2 (1 medium 1 hard) coding challenges. I failed 1 test case on the first question. On the second question I did a brute force solution that was probably correct but didn't pass the performance test cases.
I thought I wouldn't pass but I was then scheduled for final loop interview with 1 month to prepare. They email a good amount of prep material on coding, behavioral, and system design interviews. They understand the interviews are difficult and want you to succeed.
My loop interview was virtual over Chime consisting of 4 interviews each 1 hour long. Each interviewer will first ask for introduction and 2-3 leadership principal related questions. The coding is done on a shared online editor with basic syntax highlighting but no compilation:
1) Had to design and code two methods addProduct(itemId, timestamp) and getTopProducts() that gets the top 10 most purchased products in the last 24 hours. I coded a brute force solution. Then I was asked to optimize and I started giving ideas but didn't finish coding it.
2) System design AWS S3 cloud file storage. I think this went well since my architecture diagram was similar to others you find online for this problem. The interviewer was a great communicator.
3) Coding challenge that was basically to implement Topological sort. My code wasn't very clean but it should have been correct.
4) Design and code a course manager that can add members/students to courses under a given instructor e.g. addToCourse(memberId, instructorId, courseId), getCourses(instructorId). This was the worst interviewer as I don't think she understood me and would interrupt my thought process. She would paste in code and say "maybe I gave too much hint". When I would try to clarify what I needed to implement, she would paste in more code (data structures and methods). Her communication was not good. Towards the end she did say my solution is looking great and told me to write tests. The interview went 10 minutes over and it didn't feel prepared.
Overall I felt pretty good and I don't think I bombed it.
A few days later I get automated email saying that they are not progressing with my application with no feedback.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time you gave up short term gains for long term benefits.
I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle Heights, WA) in Aug 2022
Interview
3 rounds of interview
Leet code and behavioral leadership questions
Leet code rounds are three.
Behavioral questions follow STAR
It’s all levels - hard , easy, medium
All the three rounds held on same day with less chaos