Amazon | SDE 1 | India | Bangalore | July 2022 | New Grad | Offer

Not from IIT, NIT, IIIT or BIT's

Coming from a Tier-3 college where mostly mass recruiters visits.
Applied in Amazon 73 times and got OA links 8-10 times. Applied mostly with Referral through career portal.

Got OA Link on February 2022

• Two Simple DSA questions were asked and solved in 15-20 mins both + Work Life Assessment

1. First Round of Interview at First Week of July 2022.

He was SDE-2, having 6 Yrs of Exp. He introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself. Then asked me two DSA question

1. Sudoko Solver https://leetcode.com/problems/sudoku-solver/
2. Very similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/flower-planting-with-no-adjacent/ doesn't know the exact question.

At last, He asked me for "any questions" - I asked him "How it feels to work at Amazon at that high scale - rather than working at a small scale startup" (He came to amazon from a small scale startup so I asked him)

2. Second Round of Interview scheduled after 2 days

She was SDE-1, having 2 Yrs of exp working at Amazon only. She introduced herself and asked me to introduce myself. Then, She asked me 1 LC Hard Problem and 2 behavioural LP questions

1. Leetcode Hard Problem https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-path-in-a-grid-with-obstacles-elimination/ - this took me a while to explain the approach and write, as I had already solved this question I was knowing it will be long so I directly jumped into the Optimal solution - That worked for me at least.
2. LP: Time when you helped someone grow but did not benefit them.
3. LP: Time when you went above and beyond your job responsibilities.

At last, She asked me for "any questions" - I asked her "How does a big org like Amazon ensure the overall progress of an employee and reward them accordingly"

3. Third Round (Bar Raiser) scheduled after 2 weeks of 2nd Round

He was SDM (Manager), having 20 Yrs of exp. He introduced himself and asked me to introduce myself. Then, He asked me 2 DSA Problems and 2 behavioural LP questions. Also said to give the Optimal solutions only.

1. LC Hard Questions - https://leetcode.com/problems/race-car/ - I did this question already, So was able to complete this in 15 mins with the explanation and code. I might be clueless if I was doing this the first time.
2. Medium Sort of DP Problem - https://protegejj.gitbook.io/algorithm-practice/leetcode/dynamic-programming/562-longest-line-of-consecutive-one-in-matrix - Able to do this in 20 mins with code with the explanation.
3. LP Question: How do you analyze risk? Tell me a time when you took the risk.
4. LP Question: How can you deliver results on time - If the required thing is not known to you?

Then asked me what you're doing in your current company.
Again, At last, He asked me for "any questions" - I asked him the same question which I asked in the 2nd round of interviews "How does a big org like Amazon ensure the overall progress of an employee and reward them accordingly"

In all interviews, I was asked about overall time and space complexity too.

VERDICT: Selected for SDE-1 Position on the same day of Bar Raiser (3rd round), At night got a call from HR saying I got selected.

Finally into FAANG!!

Amazon generally doesn't ask this much of harder problems (at least for me these were hard) But
"When luck is bad, even amazon can ask you DP problems"

At last, Be prepared for the worst case, especially when you're in Tier-3 college