I recently had an interview with Amazon for the University Grad SDE 1 role. I passed all 3 online assessments, then had a 3 round chime interview. Timeline was : Applied in September, 2 assesments in late October, 1 assessment in early November, request to schedule interview in mid-December, waited a week so all spots filled up, recieved second request in late December, recieved interview slot, had interview in mid-January. Interview went as follows : round 1 very nervous some rambling unsure if leadership round or code round so kinda ran through LP questions(thinking it was small talk pre-LC) got LC easy, explained and coded an okay solution, definitely got working but not most optimal solution (had to get first digit of number one by one so i converted to string then grabbed first char and converted back to int rather than using bitshift). After first round had a great second round did well on LP and design and third round same thing, felt good about LP and then solved trapping rainwater (considered LC hard) in 15 min was asked follow up (trapping rainwater 2d, another LC hard) explained a recursive approach i thought might work, interviewer said it sounded good not to worry about coding it. I felt great, recieved my rejection the next day. What do you think it was ? All of it? should i have blown through that first interview with a better solution and no issues? The fact that i waited a week to schedule my interview the first time I recieved the request (it had a due date/deadline on it and i submitted it weeks before that, but they’d still “run out of slots” even though the next request i got had the same time slots except they were available)? Should I have been able to do trapping rainwater 2d so fast he asked me to code it? Does it sound like none of those are big issues and it was probably my LP responses? I’m fine accepting it was my fault and I need to do better. I just want to know what I should be focusing on. edit : on first round i made two typos and had one obvious optimization i didnt see till pointed out.
I was interviewed by a company and got rejected the very next day. Then the day after they asked if I will be interested in interviewing with another team. And they rejected on the next day as well. I never understood why because both interviews went really well. Sometimes, it is better to move on and not think too much. You were just not at the right place at the right time
LP issue
It was probably your first round. Weak response on the LP question and you say you were just "okay" on the LC easy. It cannot be any of the other reasons you suspect.
I think more of coding part. Amazon doesn’t weight so much on LP for new grads
This world needs a system to report recruiters. Would change this unfair game SO much. Better luck next time, you!
I think it’s because of your first question which you said LC easy. You converted to String which could create some doubts for interviewers. Did you explain clearly about the pros and cons. Space and time complexity of doing so?
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Note sure what exactly is the position for, but in embedded systems software, if someone uses string instead of bit shifting for that question at an onsite, I would put a strong DO NOT HIRE comment in the interview review.
Perfect you guys rock that’s what I needed to hear. I gotta get better, i didn’t even mention bitshifting because I didn’t know it till I looked it up after. Did extremely little bit wise operations as prep. Thanks guys this really helped! Edit : I did a decent job of explaining space time complexity.
Which one was the bar raiser? If you fail BR round, it's over.
I think all 3 were partial BR, they had about 10 min of behavioral LP intro which is what threw me, because I expected that as a whole to be separate.
Just cuz you “feel” it went well doesn’t mean much. The interviewers will actually try their best to make you have a positive impression of the interview regardless of how well you actually performed; coupled with the fact most people are very bad at accurate self evaluation, there’s a good chance you did much worse than you actually thought you did. I wouldn’t dwell on it too much though. Interviewing is always a numbers game and you may have been rejected for something as inane as an interviewer not liking you.
Thanks, yeah I know “feeling” isn’t the most accurate measurement, but it’s still worth taking into account. I appreciate this comment, I’m workin in just other things to help developing myself so I’ll do better next time!
You are great. If I know who the interviewer who asked you the trapping rain question was, I would email him or her with feedback to stop doing it. ESP for a college hire interview.
I don’t, but thanks. Yeah I did somewhere in range of 120-160 leetcode questions in prep for this so trapping rainwater was np, but most of my university friends have a significantly lower amount of leetcode prep so I could see it being pretty tough, let alone 2d version. Thanks for the compliment, it definitely helps to hear encouragement from someone at amazon 👍
Does time taken on OA matter?
I heard amazon was giving everyone offers this year. I guess not. Many people didn't even have a final chime interview
Some get one 30 minute final round where they just talk about what they did in OA2. Unlucky ones get three 45 minute ones.
Yeah, I had critical connection in a network for my OA2 and it was tough for me which is why I think they gave me the three round. I know someone who got deep copying a linked list with arbitrary pointers (imo significantly easier) and got a 30 min chill interview with job offer right after. Edit : point is I think how well you do on OA2 might determine 30 min chill interview vs 45 min x 3 rounds difficult