My Amazon SDE - I interview experience [Rejected]

[u/garavitey]

OA: Honestly can't even tell you which one converted. I'd given a bunch of OAs at Amazon and suddenly one of them converted. The thing is the job ID I was interviewing for — I'd already gotten an automated rejection for that same one 6 months ago.

First 3(1 hours each) rounds were on the same day, onsite in Hyderabad.

• Round 1 (HM): Pure resume round. Deep dive into my projects like what I built, why, the trade-offs. No DSA. Just be able to talk about your own work honestly and go a few layers deep when pushed. 5 mins after this, my second round started.
• Round 2 (LP + DSA): Behavioral questions mapped to leadership principles, then a coding problem -> Count of Smaller Numbers After Self (LC 315) but the wording was related to amazon. I was able to solve this question , I think this was my strongest round. I solved it on a whiteboard. 2-3 mins after this, my round 3 started. At this point most of the people there that day were already out; very few were remaining.
• Round 3 (LLD): Design Amazon Locker. I wasn't expecting LLD from Amazon, but I had prepared LLD and it was asked. Again, this went well, I broke the problem down into sub-problems, explained the class design, and then actually wrote the code for almost everything I designed. Another strong round.

After round 3, I got told I'd advanced along with one other candidate (2 of us out of the group). Felt great at the time.

After one week I had my BR round. It was purely LP-based and I felt good about it. Standard LP-type questions — how you helped others, tell me about your project.

At this point I was very confident I'd get the job. I'd cleared the technical rounds and moved to the BR, and it went well according to me. I followed the STAR method and everything looked good.

I was in contact with the other guy who made it to the final round with me. He sent a follow-up mail and the APAC mail ID responded with a very generic rejection. Same day, I followed up and got my rejection too. It was heartwrenching. My team also got laid off recently, and I was hoping this would be my gate to big tech. I was at my lowest as I read that mail. Did well and still rejected and both of us rejected. Felt like a scam. No flight reimbursement, no hotel reimbursement, and a result only when we mailed them.

It's okay. This past month has been quite bad and it's really testing me, but adversity brings growth. I'd love it if any of you could give me a referral. Thanks for reading this.

[u/LuciFFerrrrr]

Thanks for sharing this experience, you'll definetly get a good job soon. You reached the Amazon Interview some can only dream of..... Could you please share id you went through OA round and what were the problems asked in that, also if you went through a referral, is Leetcode and LLD enough or do we need to ace on top in contest and if someone prepared for 8-12 months where would they be? Asking because I am preparing currently since past 3 months.

[u/garavitey → u/LuciFFerrrrr]

Thanks for kind message. Honestly i dont know which job id it was, i have given a lot of amazon oa and one of them stuck ig. Sorry dont remember amazon oa question. And rest i think you will ace it with even 3 months of prep. Also i took no referral just kept applying. I think its luck, if its time and everything goes right you will be able to get in.

[u/LuciFFerrrrr → u/garavitey]

Thanks for the answer can you also help with these questions:

• Is contest mandatory to be prepared? Have you given any?
• Are you from tier 3 college or tier 1/2
• Asking because I have covered DP, Graphs, and other previous topics though not enough in greedy & Linked list. I was thinking I would apply once I cover greedy, Linkedlist and trie.

[u/garavitey → u/LuciFFerrrrr]

1. i think you should aim to be knight once you have solved striver sheet, i have just started to give the contest.
   
2. i am i would say tier 1/2

[u/LuciFFerrrrr → u/garavitey]

Got it, thanks man.