Amazon | Interview Experience

Amazon SDE Onsite Interview Experience (5 Months Experience)

Got a mail for the onsite interview, and a form was shared to choose the location (Bangalore/Hyderabad). After filling out the form, I got a call from HR asking if I was available on the following date.

Round 1 (Onsite) – 1 hour

Two DSA questions.

Question 1: Similar to Rotting Oranges
https://leetcode.com/problems/rotting-oranges/description/

Solved it using BFS.

Follow-up: Can we optimize it?
Basically, the interviewer didn’t want me to use a visited array.

Question 2:
https://leetcode.com/problems/find-the-celebrity/description/

Started with the brute force approach, then optimized it.

At the end, there were 2 Leadership Principle (LP) questions.

Interviewer seemed satisfied.

Round 2 (Onsite) – 1 hour

DSA Question: Something similar to Two Sum but in a Binary Tree.

Solved it using brute force, and in the follow-up optimized it using a map.

Second question (follow-up):
If the tree is a BST and we are not allowed to use a map, how would you solve it?

Solved it after receiving a hint. The interviewer seemed satisfied.

Then there were 2 LP questions.

Round 3 (Virtual) – 1 hour

DSA Question: Reverse the edges of a directed graph.
(I had to write the entire code from scratch — from taking input to printing the output — in an online compiler.)

Solved it.

LLD Question: Asked me to design 2 features from my past experience.

Got some follow-up questions. I completed the first feature, but there was no time left for the second one, so the interviewer asked me to leave it.

Ended with 2 LP questions.

Round 4 – Bar Raiser (Virtual) – 45 minutes

The interviewer mentioned at the beginning that this would be a pure behavioral round (Leadership Principles only).

It didn’t go as well as I expected.

He asked me to describe a complex problem I solved in my past experience. I had prepared stories in advance, but at the end of my answer he smiled and said:

“It doesn’t sound very complex to me.”

I dont know what he was expecting. At that point, I felt like I might already be rejected.

After that, he asked 3 more LP questions with follow-ups.

Verdict: Pending

Experience: 5 months
College: NIT (Tier 2)