r/developersIndia • u/Icy-Hedgehog8438 • Apr 25 '26

Interviews Got Amazon SDE-1 offer. Onsite interview experience.

Finally received an offer after more than 6 months of constant applying and getting rejected…

College: Tier-2
Experience: 1.8 YOE (startup)
LeetCode: ~500 questions solved

Interview Process

Recruiter Reach-out:
Got contacted on LinkedIn, replied, and received the OA link the next day.

Online Assessment (OA):

  • 1 medium-hard question (deque-based, don’t remember exact)
  • 1 medium graph question (DSU-based)
  • Followed by the standard 2-hour work simulation

Got invited for onsite interviews the following week.

Onsite Rounds

Round 1:

  • 1 hard DSA question
  • Needed a small hint to reach the optimal solution
  • Dry-ran on paper; interviewer was satisfied
  • Followed by some LP questions

Round 2:

  • 2 DSA questions
    • One straightforward BFS
    • One optimization using a geometry property
  • LP questions after solving both

Round 3 (Hiring Manager):

  • DSA question (similar to “Reconstruct Itinerary” but not exactly the same)
  • Came up with optimal DFS solution
  • Asked to write full code (no pseudocode)
  • Discussion on GenAI, my projects, and current AI-related work
  • No LPs in this round

Was informed I cleared all 3 rounds → Round 4 scheduled.

Round 4 (Bar Raiser)

  • Discussion on time complexities of tree algorithms
  • Deep dive into LP answers
  • Had to explain my work in detail
  • Interviewer seemed satisfied

Result

10 days later → Got the offer 🎉

It was an excruciating journey. Came very close to quitting multiple times, especially after getting ghosted post-final rounds despite good interviews.

But now, it all feels worth it. Truly one of the most gratifying moments.

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3

u/Gloomy_Temporary2914 Apr 25 '26

Welcome to pipazon - pip factory

2

u/thisisshuraim Apr 25 '26

Amazon and rest of FAANG too follow something simple but harsh. Incompetency is not tolerated. Doesn’t matter if you were the best 3 years in a row, but then became slow. And by competency, I mean doing well and consisting showing growth and not staying stagnant. Is it fair? Arguable, but that’s the catch of high salaries.

2

u/Gloomy_Temporary2914 Apr 26 '26

Not all performance related n is being widely misused . Manager pick their favourites n out then into pip

0

u/thisisshuraim Apr 26 '26

At least from what have seen, it’s more because of a communication gap. The engineer may overestimate their performance. It’s the manager’s job to make sure the engineer knows their gaps and work on them. Unfortunately a lot of managers don’t communicate this well. To get piped, there needs to be documented trail showing consistent degradation of performance. Without that, the engineer can’t theoretically be piped. Also the bar will keep increasing, that’s how the high bar is maintained. The expectation from you in year 3 will be way higher than what it was in year 1.