Hi guys, I have an Amazon onsite in a month time. I’m applying with the Alexa team SDE II position with 3 years of experience. This is my first time interviewing with a FANG company and could really use some advice here. I’ve been practicing mainly on DS/Algo using Leetcode and EPI. I haven’t even touched on System Design yet. From your perspective, how much time should I put aside to pick up System Design and how should I go about it? Also, is there any specific DS/Algo I should focus more on? Thanks for the help in advance!
They focus too much on LP. Coding and design was cakewalk.
The leadership principles: I've failed Amazon's interviews because I didn't drink their Kool aid well enough. If you really want to get into Amazon, you either need to drink their Kool aid so much your skin turns purple or you need to be damn good at faking it.
Thanks for the emphasis on LP. I will definitely make sure to heavily prep on that. Putting that aside, how would I go about preparing for System Design? Would grokking the system design interview along with some YouTube be the bare minimum? Or do I have to go much more further in-depth.
Speaking as someone who sucks at system design interviews: you can't really "study" for these things like you can leet coding. You need to actually practice with real system design interviews. Mock ones can get you so far, but unless you're mocking with someone who's an interviewer for these kind of roles already, it won't help the same as a real interview. It sucks, but unless you yourself have at least a good 5 years of system design experience already, you'll probably need to practice with real system design interviews.
Yeah. I feel more comfortable with System Design already despite not practicing for it as much as I’m leetcoding, as I have been building products from scratch for years. It’s much more familiar rather than those Graph and Tree questions. I’ll probably give pramp a shot in mock interviews once I’m done prepping.
Leetcode wont help. For Amazon you have to really really prepare well. The most important step you can take is to go to your manager and ask them to enslave you. Have them give you crazy amounts of work which will forfe you to work 60 hour weeks for months. Then to really get the Amazon vibe, reduce your week to only 55 hours. Ask your manager to immediatly put you on PIP for underperforming. See how long you survive knowing that an axe is over your head. If after all this, you are stil functional, you have no serious health issues - physical and mental, then and only then yiu are ready for Amazon's onsite and for a great career there.
Calm down.
You will have at least 1-2 LP questions at the end of each interview, so be prepared. Coding and OO skills are also important and will be the biggest part of the interview. You shouldn’t have more than question related to system design, be prepared though.
The recruiter did told me that there will be at least 1 System Design Interview though. Definitely gotta prep for it as well. Just not sure what would be the effective strategy.
I wanted to say « more than 1 » but forgot « 1 » haha. Yeah, 1 for sure
Coding questions will be relatively simpler than those of other faang companies. System design would most probably be around scaling problem. Work really hard on preparing stories from your past experiences.
For sure study system design. Also, study the leadership principles!!! Cannot overstate this. Come up with a couple of examples for how you displayed those principles in the past.