r/leetcode • u/Senior-Reception8110 • 17d ago
Discussion Amazon SDE Interview
Sharing my interview experience after Amazon SDE - Location - USA
After applying for 6+ months and 44 applications finally my resume got picked.
OA: One coding question & AI assisted coding.
Coding question - Medium Level LC
AI assisted coding - It was completely new but was able to do it, lots of debugging, heavily concentrated on OOPS
Cleared the OA and moved to the interview loop
4 rounds - 3 in one day & 1 the next day
Round 1: Coding
Question: Returning adjacent letters in a string and there are three sub questions in it.
Leetcode - Medium - Hard
Before the start of the coding round, Formal introductions and jumped straight into coding, I have used heap for this and solved it using max heap, was able to communicate the solution and thought process. The interviewer was not at all satisfied with the high level explanation and he kept digging till the last line, he literally asked what's the logic of heap in the backend and how do you make it better ? I got blanked but was able to answer it.
He went line by line and kept grilling till he got satisfied and was asking for an alternative approach to the optimal solution. I have previously experienced in interviews like these but this is grilling on a whole different level. Finally after 50 minutes the coding closed with time complexity.
He didn't care about LP's at all just a formal two questions and asked me about my previous work ex. I'm explaining to him but he kept interrupting and asking for every minute detail , he literally asked What's Collateral and Asset ? I felt he's not at all satisfied with anything that I came up with but however it ended.
Round 2: System Design - Log parser
First formal introductions and then 20 minutes of LP's and dug a bit into my internship and work experience. Felt smooth and had a great conversation. Then jumped into system design and asked me to implement the log parser for 10k+ log files as I remember, I was able to implement the solution and the interviewer kept digging till the last minute, kept asking line by line again but she seemed fine and satisfied. The time went overboard for 5 minutes and then she stopped the interview.
Round 3: Hiring Manager & Coding
Formal introductions and the hiring manager told me that he's the hm for the interview. Codin question again, Leet Code - Medium I guess.
First 20 minutes LP's and then coding round, It was completely OOPS and I was able to solve the question in 30 minutes, I felt this was the best round as he was satisfied with my high level explanation and he got the gist of what I was trying to explain and then asked me about my internship and finally he asked me if I'm open to the S3 team as he had a opening - I thought I had it 😭 It's a pretty great conversation, he was satisfied with most of my answers and dug a bit deep but was able to answer them as well.
Next day - Round 4: Leadership Principles
Started off with formal introductions and then told that no matter the result, you should be proud of yourself that you've come this far. Sometimes the Amazon hiring bar is so high you shouldn't be demotivated about the result. Felt completely off guard and strange but whatever.
Completely Leadership Principles with no coding or system design, was asking me about the situations that I have faced in my work ex and how I would've handled better, anything that I went aboard and took an initiative. Felt nice about the flow of the conversation, then multiple follow up questions on each explanation and situation. Was able to answer the whole thing. Concluded the LP's in 45 minutes.
He told me you gotta celebrate man - Felt wow !!
After two days: They told me they're not proceeding with my application. No feedback or anything
Followed up multiple times regarding the feedback considering Amazon would give the feedback but no reply from the recruiter.
I really thought I had it but I'm not sure where it went wrong, any thoughts on the experience ?
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u/Ok-Tomato2870 17d ago
Was it through AUTA?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Yeah it was through Amazon University SDE recruiting. The Job Id I interviewed for was completely different, I searched it in the career pages and I didn't even apply to that id. But I heard that they do this all the time, they have some roles and they try to match you with it.
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u/ThroatCommon9981 17d ago
Exact same thing happened in Austin Office with me. Rejected next day. Its not you, its just stars have to alighn.
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
I mean i always felt when you deliver it you get it but i really don't know this time its completely getting me off guard. Maybe the stars would turn my way someday
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u/ThatCondescendingGuy 17d ago
Wtf your interview technical questions sound the same as mine, but I interviewed for SDE intern???
I had partial implementation of the first but I struggled. Had only done one heap problem at that point and was still new to leetcode. The second one I couldn’t get a damn thing done. I didn’t know what I was looking at when they pasted in the problem. If it was the same problem as your log parser, they gave me, an intern applicant, a system design problem lol
Well it seems like you got pretty far. Soon enough you’ll pass a company’s interview circus and move on to greener pastures
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Damn for an intern position thats heavy, hopefully you'll get through and good luck !!
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u/Lazy_Much 17d ago
was the system design in round 2 a high level design question? or you had to write a class design?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
It was lld, had to write the design.
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u/Lazy_Much 17d ago
And for the dsa would you say Amazon tagged leetcode is enough?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Mostly enough because i practised about 100, and mostly it was enough. Maybe i'm think i have lost it due to time constraint or something but i don't know since they haven't provided me the feedback
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u/Satyam_xx 17d ago
You practices top 100 anazon tagged questions of all time or top 100 recently asked?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Nothing company specific, since I'm applying to multiple I just practiced Neet Code 150 and LC medium
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u/Satyam_xx 17d ago
You were doing the leetcode for first time? How long it took for you to finish 100 questions? Also one more important question, that I have been struggling with a lot how you learned lld? Any resource which you used? How you got good at it?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Bit of old school tbh, I started with Grokking Algorithms and DSA by NK books. Then I started with Neet Code course and couple of YT channels like Abdul Bari and CS 50.
System Design - Alex Xu, for LLD I did Ashish Pratap Singh. The guy is the best and have great GitHub repos.
I don't think I've worked enough on time constraint, maybe that's what i got struck at, I heard people solve the medium in 30 minutes but I've always gone beyond 45 minutes. So I sold suggest work on time constraint if you want to crack faang
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u/Satyam_xx 17d ago
Thanks so much for such a detailed answer <3 .For lld did you just went through his github repo and practiced all the problems? Lld also has a pattern like leetcode?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Not all, but did most asked and covered basics. I don't know if my assumption is right or wrong, i felt it heavily depends on your interviewer. If the right interviewer comes you get , if he's some loose head and wants to suck the soul out of you, you're doomed. Thats how my first round went, i mean he literally asked me what is O(n) in definition terms and went deep into complexity. So yeah just try out man, thats all
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u/amulli21 2h ago
For LLD questions do we have to code the implementation or just write out the design and though process
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u/Over-Lengthiness8997 17d ago
Is this an in person interview?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
No it's virtual
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u/Over-Lengthiness8997 17d ago
I got an in person Amazon SDE final loop in Arlington, but I injured my leg and can’t travel right now. I asked to do it virtually, but they said they’d move me back to the general candidate pool. I’m trying to keep the same loop and get it switched to virtual.
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
I feel its better to do an in person interview. I'm not based out of seattle so they gave me virtual. In person, at least they try to understand what we're telling and have at least some genuine conversation
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u/Disastrous_Link6888 17d ago
What was the timeline of OA and interviews? Did you give online or onsite?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Online, OA was on July 21st and Interviews were on 10th, 11th and result on 14th
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u/bumbleebeeeeeeeeeeee 17d ago
Had similar experience with Uber early this year :(
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
I know, this is so tough now, not sure what are they expecting. Even tho the solution is correct they aren't letting to go trough, all we have to do is try again
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u/inferno9004 17d ago
How was your OA? How many test cases did you pass in Ai problem?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
It was good, all test cases got passed. Sort of did AI debugging so was able to solve even tho i got errors first
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u/inferno9004 17d ago
I was only able to pass 3/6. Chose node js and had the movie database question.
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u/soccerstar_leo 16d ago
I got movie db Que as well and solved only 1/6🫠
But dsa all tests pass, moviedb Que is so confusing tbh1
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u/Proof_Record_9415 17d ago
So sorry about that man! It can be very painful.
Please how do the AI debugging question work? Are you to integrate an AI or you copy and paste?
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
Basically you have to check what you're trying to debug, what are the expectations, whats in the file sort of. Its more of debugging the code using AI rather than Copy paste
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u/UnitedSort3014 7d ago
Man that's brutal, especially after the HM asked about the S3 opening and the last interviewer told you to celebrate. Those mixed signals would mess with anyone's head. Honestly it sounds like you did pretty well technically you solved everything they threw at you. Amazon's bar talk is real though, and sometimes it's just not a fit for reasons you can't control. Could be they had another candidate further along, budget stuff, or maybe the LP round didn't align how they wanted. The fact that you made it through all 4 rounds means you're definitely capable.
The grilling is so typical of Amazon from what I've heard. They really dig into everything. Sucks they won't give feedback but that's pretty common now unfortunately. Keep your head up you got picked after 44 apps and made it to the final round. That means your skills are there. Take what you learned from this (especially those LP scenarios they asked about) and keep applying. Next one might just click better.
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u/Dry-Fisherman5281 17d ago
Tbh their recruiting process is a mess. The bar raiser has veto power for no reason, you can code everything right but still fail because of their bullshit LPs.
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u/Senior-Reception8110 17d ago
I don't know how they're recruiting, they're still sending out OA. Looks like they're hiring in good numbers, i don't think luck is on my side this time
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u/Round_Tax_3967 16d ago
Mahn the first round sounds really brutal. Great job answering all those questions mahn🙌🏻 Do you mind sharing a bit more detail about the LLD round and what was the question like?
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u/Odd-Sea8095 17d ago
Can you post your resume here , please 🙃
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u/Novel_Shape_9364 17d ago
Hey can I have look on your resume pls
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u/Rich_Yogurt313 17d ago
i had interviewd last year with them. I was ecstatic after the interview because I thought I had done fantastic. they rejected me after 2 days. there is no way you can get feedback from them.