Amazon | Europe | Onsite round | March 2020

After successfully clearing the Online Assessment round, I was invited for Amazon's onsite interviews in Europe, which were scheduled for March 23, 2020. The HR team was very supportive, providing me with three weeks to prepare and sharing relevant materials. They also scheduled regular follow-up meetings to ensure I was on track with my preparation. The day arrived, and I was subjected to an intense 5-hour brainstorming session by the interviewing panel.

The first hour was an introduction to Amazon's culture, various projects, and technologies. From the second hour onwards, each round (lasting 45-50 minutes) began. By the end of the five hours, I was completely blank and exhausted; however, it was a very nice experience overall.

Round 1:

• Leadership questions:
  1. Tell me about a time when you received unexpected feedback. How did you work on it, and how did you measure the improvement?
  2. What is something that you did apart from your regular role (Business As Usual)?
• Coding Question:

  I was asked to write code to find the best way to buy and sell a stock, given an array containing stock prices for successive days. This was similar to the LeetCode problem Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock.

Round 2:

• Leadership questions:
  1. Tell me about a time when you requested to compromise the quality and high standards in your project.
  2. Can you tell me about a calculated risk tool you used, for example, by refusing something like a delivery time?
  3. Can you tell me about a time when you had multiple options for a situation but didn't have time to explore all of them, yet you needed to choose one?
  4. Tell me about a time when you worked to improve quality even when you didn't receive good feedback.
• System Design Question:

  I was asked to design an online booking system and explain how I would manage multiple users booking the same ticket simultaneously.

Round 3:

• Leadership questions:
  1. Can you tell me about a time when you had to research and choose a solution? How did you manage learning all those new technologies?
  2. Was there a time when you had a tight deadline for delivery, and did you make any compromises?
• Coding Question:

  I needed to find the first unique character in an array. This problem was similar to First Unique Number on LeetCode.

Round 4:

• Leadership questions:
  1. Tell me about a time when you had a strong disagreement with your manager or colleagues.
  2. Tell me about a time when you had an idea and communicated it to your manager, but he/she said it wasn't the correct time for now. What did you do after that?
  3. Tell me about a time when you had limited time but needed to make a decision.
• Coding Question:

  I was asked to design a file search functionality that could search by size, name, or extension. The interviewer specifically wanted a generic function that could accept any type of parameter, avoiding the need to modify the function definition if more search parameters were added later.

The interviews took place on March 23, 2020, coincidentally the day India went into a nationwide lockdown, while the world was already grappling with the COVID-19 situation. Spain, where this position was based, had already reported numerous cases by March. Following the interviews, HR had several discussions with the panel, and they ultimately decided not to proceed with my application. When I asked if there were specific skill-set issues I could improve upon, they mentioned "technical discrepancies," suggesting that the decision might have been influenced by the lockdown situation rather than my individual performance, especially given my location in India and the position in Spain. It was indeed a sad day for me.