Amazon | SDE 1 | Bangalore | July 2022 | Offer

Hey all,

I heavily depended on Leetcode for my preparation. Giving back to the leet community for your help and guidance.

About me

• YOE: 1 year
• College: Tier 3
• Current company: Reputed product company
• Prep time: ~1 month of serious preparation (I was never into competetive coding. Last I did cp was for college placements)
• LC stats: 51 Easy | 103 Medium | 10 Hard

Interview Structure

1. Online Assessment
2. DSA Round
3. Managerial Round
4. Problem Solving Round
5. Bar Raiser

All rounds apart from the first were conducted in-person.

Interview Experience

1. Online Assessment

   • Two coding questions (120 mins):
     • Prime Order Sorting
     • Optimal Travel Distance
       Each question also asked to explain logic and time complexity in a paragraph.
   • Around 50 behaviourial based MCQ questions (untimed section)

2. DSA Round

   Brief introduction. Immediately dived into coding questions. I was asked two coding questions -

   • Add strings
   • Next greater element

3. Managerial Round

   • Thorough introduction from both sides.
   • Lots of digging into my current work, domain and projects.
   • Asked to explain my contributions in my current organisations.
   • OS theory questions
     • Threads.
     • Processes.
     • Scheduling Algorithms.
   • Leadership Principle questions
     • About a time I exceeded expectations.
     • About a time I went over and beyond to help someone.
     • About a time I failed to meet a deadline.
   • Coding question
     • Zigzag traversal of binary tree

4. Problem Solving Round

   • No introduction, straight to coding question.
   • One coding question
     • Maximum number of eaten apples
   • Discussions on current team and work.
   • Asked to explain my contributions in-depth.

5. Bar Raiser

   • Develop "recently opened files" list from code editors
     • In-depth discussion on logic.
     • Asked to code add, delete and access functions with all corner cases handled.
     • My solution used deque. As a follow-up, I was asked to think of an approach with singly linked lists.
   • In a row wise sorted matrix of 0s and 1s, find the row with maximum number of 1s.
     • Expected O(m + n) solution.

Verdict: Selected

Preparation Tips

• Practise coding on paper! For all coding questions, I was asked to write and dry run the code on a sheet of paper. It feels very weird if you're not accustomed to it.
• Don't let the interviewer drive the interview. Take charge of the direction! For any question asked, try to drive it towards the topic and domains you are confident in.
• Solve the Neetcode 150 list. No, seriously. I solely did questions from this list during my preparation. If you don't have the time to solve all the questions in this list before your interviews, atleast look up neetcode's solution videos to get an idea of possible approaches.
• Practise asking the right questions for a given problem statement. Framing problem statements correctly is often a challenge for interviewers. You may find yourself confused with what is initially presented.
• For leadership principle questions, go through the leetcode list of LPs and list down the scenario you would mention for each. If you don't have the right experience, cook it up prior to the interview. Do not try to come up with stories during the interviews as the interviewer may dig deep into them.
• If you have work experience, be prepared to explain atleast one major project you worked on with specific focus on your contributions to it.
• Don't self reject! If I could do it, so can you. :)

Cheers