Interview experience @amzn
Tags: interview, programming, amazon
Published: 2022-07-01 19:16:27

_The followed interview experience is for SDE 1 profile at Amazon India which happened on-campus._

Amazon came to my campus i.e., JIIT, Noida in the month of July.
Round 1 was scheduled on the 8th of August which was conducted on a web portal provided by the company itself. The test duration was of 145 minutes wherein each and every section was timed.
This round had 4 sections:
1. Debugging(20 minutes): It is expected to fix the bug with minimum changes in the stub code and little description provided and make it work for a given number of test cases.
2. Coding(70 minutes): There were 2 questions, first was of easy difficulty which required a hashmap implementation with some tweaks as per the question. The second question was based on the 'sieve of Eratosthenes this was of hard difficulty. It was only expected to code out the implementation function. Both the questions have a bunch of test cases some were hidden, and some were available to figure out the problem.
3. Workstyles assessment(20 minutes): This section was majorly based on the leadership principles of Amazon which had loads of situational questions.
4. Reasoning ability(35 minutes): This section is comprised of general aptitude questions. Not much to describe.
At the end of the test, a feedback form occurred which was supposed to be submitted to complete the test.

<hr />

>I was pretty confident after this test as I did 100% and completed the round in around 60 minutes. Even though I was anxious until the results came out which came out on the 20th of September.

>We were given 2 days time to get ready for the interviews which were supposed to start on the 22nd. I received an invite for my interview which was scheduled for the 23rd.

<hr />

**Interviews**:
**Round 1(60 minutes)**: The interview started with my introduction, wherein I mentioned everything about myself, my internships, all the community work I did, and an overview of my projects. Therefore, I was asked about a point wherein I faced difficulty and how was I able to resolve it, I gave an in-depth explanation of the problem I was facing in my most recent project using the STAR(situation, task, action, result) principles.
After the introductory discussion which lasted for 15 minutes, I received my first question on Data structures and Algorithms, this was supposed to be coded out on a different platform altogether.
The question which I received was to Populate the next right pointers in each node. Thereafter, the experience I had from all the blogs which I read was to `discuss the approach first`. Therefore, I started to tell my approach using the level order traversal, and then I eventually moved to a BFS(breadth-first search) approach. Post explaining my approach, I was asked how will I cover the edge case of not to link the nodes present at different levels. I gave an explanation of storing the level number in the queue itself and the interviewer was pretty satisfied post this explanation and I was asked to code my approach.
The link to the problem can be found [here](https://leetcode.com/problems/populating-next-right-pointers-in-each-node/)

I coded my approach and it was done. we had about 10 minutes left, and I was given a second question.
The second question was to find the minimum in a rotated sorted array, I already had the solution in my mind, but as the people with experience say, "Tell the brute force approach first.". Therefore, I went ahead and explained the solution with a non-optimised approach. I was told to optimise the same. Quickly I optimised the solution, and the time limit of 60 minutes was up which was a plus I believe.
The link to the problem can be found [here](https://leetcode.com/problems/find-minimum-in-rotated-sorted-array/)

Therefore, I was asked if I had any questions, I asked two questions which went like this:
1. Do people at Amazon team up and participate in hackathons?
2. Is Amazon planning to bring in web3 at any point? :eyes:

<hr />

>I was pretty anxious after this, wasn't able to sleep completely post this and woke up at 5 the very next day, which turned out to be fruitful as well, guess what? I had the results of Round 1 at 7 AM and my Round 2 was scheduled at 11 AM, I was damn excited and thought to give my 200% no matter what.

<hr />

**Round 2(60 minutes)**: I got 2 interviewers this time, both had 10+ years of experience in tech. I was asked to introduce myself, and I mentioned image compression which I did in my recent internship and then I was asked to explain everything about `image compression` which I did, I again used the STAR methodology to answer this question and the introductory round lasted for around 25 minutes.
Thereafter, I received the question which was to find the maximum of all distances to the nearest 1 cell from any 0 cells in a binary matrix.
I had never seen the problem, I started off telling approaches, the very first approach which I told was a DFS one(Depth-first search) which I discussed was taking extra space of 2 matrices, and then I was told to reduce it, eventually, it boiled down to O(1) space complexity. Thereafter, I coded down my approach and I was asked about the time and space complexity of the solution discussed.
The link to the problem can be found [here](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-the-maximum-of-all-distances-to-the-nearest-1-cell-from-any-0-cell-in-a-binary-matrix/)

Post this question, I had 5 minutes left and I was asked if I had any questions.
Here, I had this little thing in my head that if we are able to solve 2 questions in the round the round is considered clear. So, I asked, `Is there a second question?`(Pretty bad idea I guess.)

<hr />

I thanked both of the interviewers and it ended.

I was in vain for like 4 days and the results came out on the 28th of September wherein I was offered an internship. :heart:

A huge shoutout to `Tushar Roy(Coding made simple)` he explains dp like God, anyone can equip themselves with dp if they go through his problem-solving videos.
Shoutout to `Leetcode` as well, Leetcode is an amazing platform, everything init is surreal. You get to the next level if you consistently do the leetcode grind.

I do not intend to promote, but, these platforms and people helped me a lot, so maybe it's helpful to you as well. Find the links below. :)
[Tushar Roy](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZLJf_R2sWyUtXSKiKlyvAw
Leetcode: https://leetcode.com/)
A few links from leetcode that I found helpful:
1. [Study Plan](https://leetcode.com/study-plan/)
2. [Assessment](https://leetcode.com/assessment/)

That would be all I guess, drop your thoughts as comments if any. I just hope this helped :smile:!
Feel free to connect with me on [Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavsri360/) in case of any questions.