Amazon SDE 2 | Interview Experience (REJECTED) | 4 Months Journey | My Resources

Hi Everyone,

I am in my final loop from past 2 months. Here’s my interview experience so far:

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A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked me to apply for a position he shared. On the same day, he also sent me the OA link via email

OA:

1. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact question. But I solved it using pre-computation and hash maps. All test cases passed. (LC Medium)
2. It was similar to the standard DP problem Longest Increasing Subsequence, but applying that directly doesn’t give the optimal solution but I was able pass 11/15 test cases. (LC Hard)

I passed the OA and moved to the final loop of 4 rounds

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Round 1 (LLD - F2F):

Same LLD question

Experience:
The expectation was to write all classes and code with extensibility in mind. It went ok according to me. No negative signs from the interviewer (I later got to know they are trained to remain neutral). Since it was face-to-face, I struggled a bit to represent things clearly on paper.
The interviewer was not very interactive. Just stated the problem and asked if I had any doubts, then told me to write everything and show it to him. I asked a few questions during the process, which he answered. At the end, he took the papers, asked two minor questions about my code (which I answered), and then said he was good with the interview and closed it.
I was expecting to explain my classes and code.

Feedback from HR: NEGATIVE (No idea why)

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Round 2 (DSA - F2F):

1. https://leetcode.com/problems/max-consecutive-ones-iii/
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-profit-in-job-scheduling/

Experience:
Question 1: I felt I had seen this question in a previous contest and started solving it based on that, but I was going in the wrong direction. The interviewer was very good. She gave me a hint to "think in a window way." That helped, and I solved it easily. Half the time went here.
Question 2: Only 10–15 mins were left. This is LC Hard. I had solved it just 10 days earlier. That helped me write the solution quickly. It’s a DP + Binary Search problem. Just DP gives TLE. BS is needed to optimize it. In the interview, I wrote the DP solution but didn’t have time to recall and explain the BS optimization. But the interviewer was okay with that.

Feedback from HR: Just POSITIVE
(Reasonable. I solved Q1 with a hint, and Q2 missed BS optimization but given the time, I think that’s acceptable.)

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They proceed to the HLD round only based on feedback from Round 1 and Round 2.
Due to the negative feedback in LLD, I thought I was out. But they still scheduled HLD for me. Initially, I thought it might be just a formality. But a few candidates I met during F2F were rejected after 2 rounds due to both being negative. So I kept some hope and continued preparing for HLD.

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Round 3 (HLD - Virtual):

Design: URL Shortener

Experience:
I was confident about this round since I had ample time to prepare. Did mock interviews with friends and covered most commonly asked HLD problems. But I was asked a relatively simple one. I fumbled a bit but overall feel it went well. The interviewer seemed okay with my design.

Feedback from HR:
Before the round, HR mentioned that only if the HLD round goes well then only I will move to the final round.
I called HR after the interview, he told me that feedback will take time. Later, I learned from a friend that all rounds will be evaluated during a debrief, and then the final decision will be made to proceed the application or not.

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LPs (Leadership Principles):

In all 3 rounds, two LP questions were asked (for around 15 mins).
I didn’t mention this above, but DON’T IGNORE LPs — they carry more weight than you might expect.
You can ask your HR for the specific LPs expected in each round and prepare accordingly.
And you can find questions online from respective LP. Prepare your stories before the interview.

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Conclusion:

I will wait for my next update to know if there is a bar raiser for me or not. I will keep my hope, but I feel the chances are 50-50. Also, please let me know below in the comments what you think.

This Amazon journey has been going on for the past 4 months for me, where I am learning and giving interviews. Not sure about the result, but what I can say is this learning journey will help me a lot. Even if I don’t pass this Amazon interview, it will still be useful for other company interviews. If anyone is starting his/her grind for top tech companies, all the best to you! You can check out my preparation resources below, they may help you. Keep grinding. Thank you for reading this far!

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UPDATE:

- REJECTED! I talked to HR. He mentioned I lacked design depth in LLD and HLD, which is required for SDE 2. As I mentioned above, no idea what happened with my LLD interview. Maybe I was not able to represent things correctly on paper. At least the interviewer should have asked some questions about my classes/code to see if I was writing them correctly or not.
Now, coming to HLD which was a very easy one. I don’t know what made it an unacceptable design. I think my mistake was not defending my statements at 2-3 places.
6-character alias generation with alphabets and numbers gives 62^6 combinations, which goes into billions, whereas the interviewer thought it was in lakhs. 100^6 is 10^12. Since he told me it is less, I thought it was 10^7 (my bad) and then I suggested a hashing solution, which was accepted by him.
It’s OK. A 4-month journey came to an end — on to the next one.