Interview Experience

Amazon SDE 1 Interview Experience

Company Name: Amazon

Job Role: Software Development Engineer 1

Years of Experience Required: 0

Drive: Off-campus

Preparation

Topics: Complete DSA

Duration: 2-3 months

Source of Preparation:

  • GeeksForGeeks ( All amazon tagged questions), Leetcode ( Easy-Medium from top interview questions list)

[BONUS]:

Interview Rounds

Round 1: (Onsite) Technical 

Problem 1: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/median-of-two-sorted-arrays/

Problem 2: Most frequent subtree sum in a binary tree.

Example:

		1
	      /   \
	     2      3
  	   /  \    /
           4  5  6

Input:  A binary tree 

Output: The most frequent subtree sum. Here, the subtree sum for a node is defined as the sum of the left subtree v values, right subtree values, and the node value.

In the above tree, the subtree sums are 4,5,6, 11, 9, 12,10. Since the frequency of each is 1, we return any value. 

(used hashing and post order traversal)

Round 2:  (Onsite) Technical

Problems:

  1. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/boundary-traversal-of-binary-tree/
  2. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-length-largest-region-boolean-matrix/

Round 3: HR/Managerial Round

Leadership questions like a project you completed under tight deadlines, how could you improve your project? What trade-offs did you make?

Design a class that returns the average marks of a student.

Example:

This was a very open-ended question and needed decisions on the requirements. I suggested a student ID for recognizing which student we are talking about. The class will have a function called getAverage() which can return the average marks. 

Round 4: Bar raiser round

This round just has interviewers from a different team. In my case, there were 2 people on the call. One was a senior manager who was just an observer and the other was a senior SDE.

Problem 1: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/longest-increasing-path-matrix/

Problem 2: Return the sum of all nodes whose Kth ancestor is even.

Input: A binary tree

Output: Sum of all nodes with an even Kth ancestor

Example: 

K= 2 (means the second ancestor)

	1
      /   \
     2     3
   /  \    /
  4    5  6
 /
7

Here the output will be 7, because 2 is even. 

(used a vector to keep track of ancestors)

Verdict: Selected

Message to Aspiring Students:

DON’T GIVE UP. I was in a near-depression state because I couldn’t clear online tests of more than 10 companies(despite having female hiring drives). And yet, I made it. You can too 🙂 It is overwhelming, but consistency is the key. For questions, you aren’t able to solve, make a list and keep revising until you know you can’t go wrong. 

With respect to Amazon, make sure you prepare for leadership questions as well. Also, even if the interviewers don’t ask, mention the time and space complexity at any cost. Can give you an edge.

Since I already had given a few interviews, I was pretty confident with my communication skills. Mock interviews on Pramp are an extremely important step in your preparation. Even while practicing on leetcode, try to speak out your solution as if it’s a discussion with someone, and make sure that when you press that submit button, it gets accepted right away. Think of edge cases and possible modifications to every question you solve. 

Lastly, have faith in your abilities! And although it does not matter, I’d like to mention that I am from a Tier-1 college, but it wasn’t easy for me either. Keep hustling and keep watching Striver bhaiya’s videos 🙂

Active Linkedin Profiles for Seeking referral at Amazon: Shikhar Garg, Riddhi Dutta. Mostly all amazon employees(preferably from your college) are willing to refer.