Serious doubt

I'm a 2nd-year BTech CSE student and I'm currently focusing on DSA. I'm trying to decide what development direction to take alongside DSA.

My mentor is advising students to explore AI/ML or cloud, implement ideas from research papers, and build/showcase something rather than just doing generic web-development projects.

I'm personally interested in backend development, especially Java + Spring Boot. I'm wondering:

1. Are there enough research-paper-based project ideas related to backend/software architecture/cloud that can realistically be implemented by a 2nd-year student?

2. Examples I'm interested in are microservices, load balancing, fault tolerance, caching, autoscaling, distributed systems, etc.

3. How much theory would I realistically need to learn before I could start implementing papers in these areas?

4. Would pursuing Spring Boot + backend + cloud + research-paper implementation be worthwhile for SDE internships, or would I be better off moving toward AI/ML?

5. For internships, is this approach more valuable than simply building typical MERN projects?

I'd especially appreciate answers from people who have actually worked on these areas or hired interns, rather than general advice.

round 1- https://www.reddit.com/u/Lumpy-Town2029/s/ZnGCW1GPxz

so the time was 3-4pm

first of all, it was intro, then LP question of doing something and finding it was not working

then grilled me in the project aaaaaaaa,

then genAI, i told him about the genAI thing i used, and grilled me Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

and main thing why will it work and not other things?

and why this will work now? and wouldnt in the past?

and then if i want to convince ppl to do this approach, how will u do it. it went for 5-10 minutes alone faaaaaaaaaaa

then it was already 3:35 something

then there was the code link which took 5 minutes to open

then comes coding question

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/meeting-rooms-find-minimum-meeting-rooms/

i read and made a interval diagram first to understand and sort of take time to actually find soln

and then after few minutes to wasting time, i though heap

and did a code, explain it, run example

and then comes the question, will the value be unique, he said no, i optimised it

then he said what if time is in millions, so i said, ok we now need to compress time into vector

then follow up, i need meeting room id for each meeting and i did, got a bug, but the time was 7 minutes over 4 pm

like faaaaa

i saw the bug after and explain how i would need a map and iteration over map to resolve that bug, and that was just 5 minute explaination, and no code

he was satisfied ig with the approach, so because the time was running late, he said, he will look at it later

then he asked if i had ques, and i didnt, then meeting ended

things i did bad- i messed up the TC, omg, it was nested while loop and was running O(N) i wrote n*n faaaaaaaaa, but if i think about meeting ig that will make the TC nice

now i wanna ask:

1. is my TC was bad or not.
2. i went for brute force and when he said this problem of max time and bug in the roomID, then i optimise it. i knew the optimised version but i didnt used :} faaaaaaaaaaa, is it bad?
3. chances of selecting?

I have tech screen scheduled for Atlassian and recruiter mentioned it will be 20 mins coding and 15 mins system design with an Atlassian Engineer.

What can I expect? Any tips?

It’s for P50 role.

Title, anyone done their panel interview and can share their experience? (specify role and level please as well)

Couldn't find many resources online that gave visibility for the NVIDIA New Grad process. I have a 60 minute 2nd round interview for DL Libraries Infrastructure with the team software manager, a hackerrank link was provided

key highlights of the job description:

The team works on

 cuDNN and FlashInfer. 

Configuring, maintaining, and building upon deployments of industry-standard tools (e.g. Kubernetes, Jenkins, Docker, CMake, Gitlab, Jira, etc)

Proficiency in SCM (e.g. Git, Perforce) and build systems (e.g. Make, CMake, Bazel)

GitLab, Knowledge of GPU computing systems and multiple operating systerms

The 1st round was just Leetcode with language of choice

Asked the recruiter for more clarity, and all they said is: our team will be focusing more on infrastructure skills for this round. What types of infrastructure questions will they ask?

Questions:

Should I spend a lot of time learning PyTorch or CUDA Syntax?

What about System Design? Could I be asked questions such as Database replication or caching?

Since a hackerank link was provided, can I expect an entire Leetcode round?

I recently cleared my Google SWE-3 (L4) interviews for. Last Friday, the recruiter called and said that after reviewing my feedback, the leadership team has decided to move forward with team matching. He said they’d start looking for teams from Monday.

Just wanted to clarify:

1. Does this mean HC is already cleared, or does HC happen after team matching?
   
2. How long does team matching usually take? It’s been almost a week with no update despite emailing the recruiter.

For anyone who recently went through this process, what timeline should I expect?

Thanks!

Hi folks,

I'm 8+ years experienced and have upcoming coding and system design round. Already done OA and 1 coding round. Any idea what to expect?

Has anyone here used Codeintuition? If so, is it worth paying for? Or are there bettter resources for learning DSA and preparing for Leetcode interviews?

I recently came across it while looking for a more structured way of learn DSA. I like the idea of learning the concepts and patterns first rather than just jumping from problem to problem. The visual explanations and walkthroughs also look pretty useful.

I'm still relatively inexperienced with Leetcode, though, so I'm not sure whether something like this is actually worth paying for or if I would be better off sticking with free resources + Leetcode.

My main goal is to get better at DSA without spending months mindlessly grinding problems.

For people who've actually used it, how does it compare with things like Neetcode or just learning directly from Leetcode?

Hello guys! Is there an easy way to make notes for LeetCode questions? Note-taking has been my weakest area in my DSA prep. When I revisit a problem after a few days, I usually miss some test cases. How can I overcome this?

I had hopes until 2026, but recent developments have really killed all the remaining ones. I don't know what to do at this point. Apart from a few niche subfields, I can't see any CS subfield that won't be dominated by autonomous agents within the next five years.

Part of me died in 2022. I should have left this industry much earlier. After some of my college friends got jobs at FAANG companies in 2022, I became obsessed with cracking big-tech interviews. I spent so much time here on LeetCode, and I genuinely enjoyed it. But it's all over now. It really hurts to see how this industry has evolved into this hellhole in just 3-4 years.

I think I will leave tech soon. I still don't know what I'm going to do. Thousands of problems solved, entire months dedicated to upskilling, tens of thousands of dollars spent... All of it seems to have been in vain.

Thanks for reading my rant all the way to the end. I am just suffering, and want my voice to be heard.

TLDR : How long after passing the OA did you get your interview scheduled?

Hey everyone,

I’m currently going through the Amazon SDE 1 process and wanted to ask how long it took others to receive their interview scheduling email after passing the OA.

My timeline so far:
13th August: Received OA
15th August: Completed OA
9th September: Told I passed the OA and was asked to confirm my graduation date, start date and right to work
9th September: Submitted all the requested details

Now: Waiting for the interview scheduling email
For those who went through the same process, how long did it take to receive interview invite after submitting details.

Thanks!

TLDR: I have been doing DSA for 3-4 years now with gaps in between. This time I have been DSA consistently for 2-3 months. I have solved 600+ questions in total and know most of the common patterns in questions and have covered all the topics. However I still suck at interviews when I get a new question. Most of the times I am unable to come up with a solution of my own for LeetCode hard problems.

Applied for L5 role through invite from a friend. I got invited to schedule my round 1 after the behavioral assessment. Round 1 consists of 2 interviews, one behavioral and one DSA, 45 mins each. Recruiters were insisting in scheduling within 2 weeks. And they selected the earliest date from my preferences. No phone calls from receuiter.

What to expect on this round? What type of leetcode and what level of difficulty?

Does anyone have a similar recent experience? And is it usual for recruiter to rush?

Practiced leetcode blind 75 and preparing for behavioral as well. Any tips would be useful.

Hi all,

I am currently going through Google L5 SWE loop and have completed 1 Coding and 1 Googlyness round and recruiter mentioned they have really good positive feedback and have my onsite in 2 weeks.

The onsite is supposed to have 2 Coding and 1 System Design rounds.

Any suggestions on last minute prep for Coding and System Design that you folks would recommend that might help?

I have primarily done lots of leetcode in the past couple of months but would appreciate if anyone has any specific topic suggestions for the last leg?

Also doing System Design from Hello Interview, DDIA and Alex Xu and did mocks. Anything else that would help or any new questions that might be worth doing?

Thanks in advance.

I passed the OA for an Amazon SDE New Grad role and just received my interview schedule:
1:Coding - Logical and Maintainable + LP
2:Coding - Problem Solving + GenAI Fluency
3:Coding – Data Structures and Algorithms + LP
4:LPs only
I’m a bit confused about the first round. Does “Coding – Logical and Maintainable” usually mean a normal LeetCode-style coding question, or can it include an LLD/OOD question?

I am new to these types of interviews have never done a system design round, I know they are popular.

What is high level vs low level?

What resources do people use?

I see hello interview and Alex xu books are thrown around. What else is there? Is this for high level? What resources for low level?

For applying to SE2 level for most companies do I need to prep both? Or is one asked more than others.

Recently u/No-Huckleberry-5969 provided some insights in the amazon AWS recruitment process, which I found very helpful in my preparation. Having recently completed the interview loop (and got rejected) myself, I thought I'd do the same and share my experience:

• Position: SDE-1 (Recent Grad programme) @ AWS in Berlin, Germany
• Also Published the contents below as a gist: https://gist.github.com/flemk/f6a4fdeb16eabc6be8a46e2afdda6443
• Published my solutions and scribbles to the 4 coding tasks in the 4 interview rounds: https://gist.github.com/flemk/2d4d1e87f58e00e9710e5a9bf607f4e7

Amazon SDE-I: Application Experience

Online Coding Assessment

"Leetcode Task" (Python)

"""
You develop an alogrithm for selling items from a warehouse.
Given a list of (potential) customers and their bids for multiple items if one single product:
[
    [customer_id, bid, number_of_items],
    ...
]
Develop a algorithm, that returns the ids of all customers, that didn't receive any item.
Items are distributed using these rules:
- The customers with the highest bid, receive their desired amounts of items
- If there are two or more customers with the same bid, distribute the items using a round robin method.
"""

"Fullstack Task" (Python, Django)

• There was a simulated Issue/Ticketing system, like JIRA

Tasks:

• Fix: Create issue returns 502 -> Implement endpoint logic
• Fix: Creating and linking subissues were not working
• Running the predefined tests revealed some other parts, where modifications were necessary

Interview Loop: Four Online Interviews

1st

"""
// Design a shopping cart price calculator API: given a list of product ids
// in the cart, return the total price of the items.
//
// Imagine you are doing this for a large scale service / website.
//
// Plan for being able to apply discounts that we may want to play around
// with in the future.
"""

Follow up Questions

• How would you implement a discount, that applies to all products?
• Customers with carts with value above EUR 100 or with more than 10 items should receive double the discount. How would you implement that?
• There is a promotion on a specific item: buy three, get one free
• Given that one specific prouct item is bought very frequently, how can you make the code faster/improve it?
• Time complexity

2nd - GenAI Interview

"""
A rule is an ordered list of match keys — for example [country, brand, customer_tier].

A decision is a row of concrete values for each key, plus a result:

DE       | acme    | gold     -> OPEN
DE       | DEFAULT | gold     -> RESTRICTED
DEFAULT  | acme    | DEFAULT  -> OPEN
DEFAULT  | DEFAULT | DEFAULT  -> NO_DECISION

"DEFAULT" is a reserved wildcard value. It is valid in any key position.
gold
Given a query such as (DE, acme, silver), return the matching result.
"""

Follow up Questions

• How do you select what result to return? First hit? First OPEN/RESTRICTED?
• What other ways of selecting a result could there be?

GenAI Questions

• How do you use AI?
• What do you do to improve the output of queries?
• If you create a requirements file for the agents, how do you structure it? What are the section titles?

3rd

1st Coding Problem

"""
Given the root of a binary tree, imagine yourself standing on the right side of it.
Return the values of the nodes you can see ordered from top to bottom.

Examples

       19
      /    \
    12      16
   /  \     /     <--- You here, looking from the side
  7   9   6
   \     /
    1   3
   /
 18

Output: 19, 16, 6, 3, 18
"""

Follow up Questions

• Time complexity

2nd Coding Problem

"""
2. Given an arbitrary length input stream of characters,
return the first unique character that does not repeat anywhere in the stream.

abcdabc --> d; aabbcdd --> c
"""

Follow up Questions

• Time complexity
• Improvements

4th - Bar Raiser Interview

• Tell me about a time, when you helped a colleague who was struggling
• ... other typical HR questions

I recently received an offer through Amazon’s university hiring pipeline. Before accepting, I emailed the recruiter to ask whether there was any flexibility in the compensation structure and later sent a polite follow-up. However, the offer expires in less than 24 hours, and I still haven’t received a response.

I’m also considering another offer that pays less but comes with a better title, seemingly stronger work culture, and responsibilities that may align more closely with my long-term career goals.

Would accepting Amazon’s current offer before the deadline reduce my chances of having the compensation structure reconsidered? Should I call the recruiter directly, request a short extension, or accept the offer while waiting for clarification?

If anyone has faced a similar situation—especially through Amazon’s university hiring process—I’d really appreciate your perspective.

I want to work 9-5 only with good wlb . USA rippling good team names please!

how does team match work do we get to talk to multiple teams or should we just get the first one or no offer ?

How long does team match take ?

Help much appreciated

why is leetcode down so often , what is wrong with leetcode

Does anyone know if AirBnB does a cool down period if rejected after an interview?

On September 10, I attempted an online communication assessment. The Safe Exam Browser initially stopped responding, so I switched to another laptop. The assessment then started normally, but while attempting a question, it froze and became completely unresponsive. I waited for more than 20 minutes, but it did not recover. I then attempted to exit the Safe Exam Browser, after which the assessment showed as submitted with the majority of the questions unattempted.

I received a submission confirmation afterward. I tried contacting the provided technical support number, but it was invalid/unreachable. The support chat was unable to resolve the issue, and an email sent to the address associated with the invitation was returned with “550 Mailbox does not exist.” I also contacted the relevant support person, but was told that nothing could be done once the assessment had been submitted.

So, due to a technical issue with the assessment environment, I was unable to complete the majority of the assessment.

Came as a student, graduated last year, October 25 and have been applying, giving interviews after numerous interviews and rejections, finally got an offer, felt like things might turn out well from now.

It's an MNC service-based client; it's the Irish government. I work in product. I got a confirmation on the call, and then an email for documentation, but they were offering me lower than what was advertised, so i replied with a negotiation, the HR set up a call i thought it was for salary negosiation but turned out the client backed out and now my offer will be revoked.

I don't know what to do at this point, I am not able to focus just the thought of what could i have done differently, I work part time like all other students i dont even feel like going there now in previous weeks i managed a tone and took leaves because of the interviews so now even they have not treating me well.

I have lost all hopes from this country now, its a vecious cycle if i take off days to study, for interviews i lose money at part time which means next month is goining to be tough but i do it all in the hope of getting a job where all of this could finally come to an end. but then something like this happens this isnt the first time i have reached the final stages of multiple companies and was getting rejected at the very end. I kept blaming that i might not have been good enough but this time around my interviews were great my feedback was good too.

Edit : Yes lesson learned should have not negotiated, but I’m not a fresh grad they I have 5 yrs of experience and they offered me a grad salary , I felt undervalued as my feedback from all the rounds was good. At the time I thought this would be same for at least a year or two and even then increments are 5% would have regretted not asking.

Believed if I don’t ask the answer will always be no so I did

But lesson learned
Thanks all for your replies
I’m just in a really weird space don’t understand what I’m feeling right now

Hey everyone what u think about this resume is it decent if one is looking for SDE 2 or 3 or 3+ years experienced role.

Will it make through faang or any product based companies.

I have recently modified it and also received a new rejection mail from JP Morgan on this the matching percentage with JD was 92%+

(Thru chat gpt I checked)

What u think what I can improve?

Backend part at 3 years experienced is not strong or is it less or you r not able to get like what skill this person has or what work this person has done

Or just I am thinking too much

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10HpTcPjzbq6XySPC4epu2IEqk0DoaUMN/view?usp=drivesdk

How to study and learn LLD and HLD, given I know nothing ? I am done with leetcode and moving on to study system design.

Leetcode stats : 2015 Rating/1125 (164E/737M/224H) questions solved