Amazon | (SD2) | Seattle | September [Reject]

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sd2seattleRejected
October 6, 20214 reads

Summary

I interviewed for an SD2 role at Amazon in Seattle and was rejected. The process involved a technical phone screen and a 5-round onsite interview, with a heavy emphasis on Leadership Principles and some LeetCode-style coding questions.

Full Experience

I recently interviewed at Amazon for an SD2 position in Seattle. The interview process consisted of a technical phone screen, followed by a demanding five-round onsite interview. Unfortunately, I was rejected.

My technical phone screen lasted about an hour. It involved two questions focused on Amazon's Leadership Principles, along with a coding problem that was similar to LeetCode's Minimum Knight Moves.

The onsite interview was structured into five separate rounds:

  1. This round involved discussions on Amazon's Leadership Principles and a System Design problem.
  2. Another round focused on LPs, along with a simplified version of LeetCode's K Closest Points to Origin.
  3. This round was purely dedicated to Amazon's Leadership Principles.
  4. Again, LPs were discussed, followed by some easier technical questions that allowed for multiple solution approaches and a discussion of tradeoffs.
  5. The final round covered LPs and the Roman to Integer problem, which also included follow-up questions.
Throughout the process, each round heavily emphasized the Leadership Principles, making technical questions somewhat secondary. On average, only about 20 minutes of coding was involved in each technical round.

Interview Questions (3)

Q1
Minimum Knight Moves
Data Structures & Algorithms

During my technical phone screen, I was given a coding question similar to 'Minimum Knight Moves' on LeetCode. The problem typically asks for the minimum number of steps a knight needs to take to reach a target square on a chessboard from a starting square.

Q2
K Closest Points to Origin
Data Structures & Algorithms

In one of the onsite rounds, I was asked a simplified version of the 'K Closest Points to Origin' problem. This problem generally involves finding the K points closest to the origin (0,0) from a given list of points in a 2D plane.

Q3
Roman to Integer
Data Structures & Algorithms

In the final onsite round, I encountered the 'Roman to Integer' problem, where I had to convert a Roman numeral string into its integer equivalent. There were also follow-up questions related to this problem.

Preparation Tips

Based on my experience, my advice would be to heavily focus on Amazon's Leadership Principles questions. From what I gathered, each round centered significantly on LPs, giving technical questions a secondary role. Additionally, practicing LeetCode-style coding problems is beneficial, keeping in mind that the coding portion typically lasted about 20 minutes per round.

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