Amazon SDE 1 - Interview Rejection

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SDE 11 years
May 31, 20255 reads

Summary

I applied for an Amazon SDE 1 role through a referral, passed the Online Assessment, but was rejected after a single interview round. I struggled with a graph problem and ran out of time for a search problem due to insufficient preparation.

Full Experience

Applied for Amazon SDE 1 opening through referral in March, 2025. Got OA link after week or so.

OA

  • 2 LC Medium - Solved both completely
  • Other sections related to work-simulation questions

Got interview selection mail on May 15. And had interview scheduled on May 22.

Interview 1

  • Started with some introduction.
  • First question was Find Eventual Safe States with some tweaked language.
  • Firstly, I didn't expected graph question coz in most past interview exp i read, asked some array, linked list or heap questions.
  • Second, I didn't understood question correctly. After some clarifications, I went to solve.
  • And went to some weird hard approach, wasted too much time in discussing approach and coding.
  • Was not able to solve for all cases.
  • By then, only 10 minutes were left.
  • Interview got me second question as Search in Rotated Sorted Array.
  • After some thinking, was able to tell approach.
  • But had no time to code.

It was very disheartnening for me to get failed so badly after getting interview call after so long wait. And, Got reality check to practice DSA daily. Regret, I didn't touched DSA since a year :(

Hope, it helps to future interviewees!!

Interview Questions (2)

Q1
Find Eventual Safe States
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

First question was Find Eventual Safe States with some tweaked language. Firstly, I didn't expected graph question coz in most past interview exp i read, asked some array, linked list or heap questions. Second, I didn't understood question correctly. After some clarifications, I went to solve. And went to some weird hard approach, wasted too much time in discussing approach and coding. Was not able to solve for all cases.

Q2
Search in Rotated Sorted Array
Data Structures & AlgorithmsMedium

Interview got me second question as Search in Rotated Sorted Array. After some thinking, was able to tell approach. But had no time to code.

Preparation Tips

Regret, I didn't touched DSA since a year :(

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