Amazon interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 1

Amazon
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4 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
After graduating with my BTech from LDRP-Gandhinagar, I luckily got a job as a System Engineer at TCS. After working a year in TCS, I started learning and mastering DSA to apply for a position at a FAANG company. In the era of COVID-19, as the majority of companies were hiring massively, I decided to apply to Amazon for upskilling and incentive purposes.
Application story
After gaining one year of TCS experience, I started applying for FAANG companies. I saw a few YT videos on how to build a resume and followed various creators for DSA preparation. I usually go to LinkedIn and sort the jobs by their latest post date. And start applying on the company webpage.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
Selected. I showed various characteristics of Leadership principles, solved the problems with efficient communication with the interviewers, and reached the optimal/sub-optimal solutions.
Preparation
Duration: 6 months
Topics: ArraysLinked ListStackTreesGraphsDynamic Programming Networking
Tip
Tip

Tip 1: Practice at least 150 medium questions.
Tip 2: Mention decent projects from your past experience or college.

Application process
Where: Company Website
Eligibility: 0-3 year experience
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1: Don’t place too much bullets and whitespaces
Tip 2: Use a proper and readable font. Use overleaf for latex resumes.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration45 mins
Interview date2 Jul 2022
Coding problem2

It was late at night around 9 pm, the camera supervision was required. Round has 2 DSA problems. One easy and one medium.

1. Sort 0s, 1s, 2s

Easy
0/40
Asked in companies
Wells FargoAmazonInspirisys

You are given an array ‘arr’ consisting only of 0s , 1s, and 2s.

Sort the given array.

For Example:

For ‘arr’ = {1, 0, 0, 2, 1}.
‘Answer’ = {0, 0, 1, 1, 2}.
‘Answer’ should contain all 0s first, then all 1s and all 2s in the end.
Problem approach

The first thing that clicked my mind was to apply the sort on the array.To further reduce the complexity i decided to count the number of 0s ,1s and 2s and store it in a map and then print out the output as per their frequencies which reduced the TC from nlogn to n.

Try solving now

2. Count Triplets

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonPayPalDunzo

You have been given an integer ‘X’ and a non-decreasing sorted doubly linked list with distinct nodes.

Your task is to return the number of triplets in the list that sum up to the value ‘X’.

Problem approach

A simple method is to generate all possible triplets and compare the sum of every triplet with the given value.

By Sorting the array the efficiency of the algorithm can be improved. This efficient approach uses the two-pointer technique. Traverse the array and fix the first element of the triplet. Now use the Two Pointers algorithm to find if there is a pair whose sum is equal to x – array[i]. Two pointers algorithm take linear time so it is better than a nested loop.

Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration60 mins
Interview date17 Jul 2022
Coding problem1

Round 1- 2 DSA problems and bit if intro/interests.

1. Maximum meetings

Easy
10m average time
90% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonMicrosoftMakeMyTrip

You are given the schedule of 'N' meetings with their start time 'Start[i]' and end time 'End[i]'.


You have only 1 meeting room. So, you need to return the maximum number of meetings you can organize.


Note:
The start time of one chosen meeting can’t be equal to the end time of the other chosen meeting.


For example:
'N' = 3, Start = [1, 3, 6], End = [4, 8, 7].

You can organize a maximum of 2 meetings. Meeting number 1 from 1 to 4, Meeting number 3 from 6 to 7.
Try solving now
03
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration70 mins
Interview date12 Aug 2022
Coding problem2

Round - 2 , Basic questions on Leadship Principles and 2 DSA questions

1. Find Number Of Islands

Moderate
34m average time
60% success
0/80
Asked in companies
WalmartShareChatAmazon

You are given a 2-dimensional array/list having N rows and M columns, which is filled with ones(1) and zeroes(0). 1 signifies land, and 0 signifies water.

A cell is said to be connected to another cell, if one cell lies immediately next to the other cell, in any of the eight directions (two vertical, two horizontal, and four diagonals).

A group of connected cells having value 1 is called an island. Your task is to find the number of such islands present in the matrix.

Problem approach

Graph where all vertices are connected with each other has exactly one connected component, consisting of the whole graph. Such a graph with only one connected component is called a Strongly Connected Graph.
This can be easily solved by applying DFS() on each component. In each DFS() call, a component or a sub-graph is visited. We will call DFS on the next un-visited component. The number of calls to DFS() gives the number of connected components.

Try solving now

2. Merge Two Sorted Linked Lists

Moderate
15m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
HSBCAmazonApple

You are given two sorted linked lists. You have to merge them to produce a combined sorted linked list. You need to return the head of the final linked list.

Note:

The given linked lists may or may not be null.

For example:

If the first list is: 1 -> 4 -> 5 -> NULL and the second list is: 2 -> 3 -> 5 -> NULL

The final list would be: 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 5 -> NULL
Problem approach

Make a dummy node for the new merged linked list
Now make two pointers, one will point to list1 and another will point to list2.
Now traverse the lists till one of them gets exhausted.
If the value of the node pointing to either list is smaller than another pointer, add that node to our merged list and increment that pointer.

Try solving now
04
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 mins
Interview date26 Aug 2022
Coding problem1

Last round - 1 DSA problem and questions about Leader ship principles based on past experience.

1. Rotting Oranges

Moderate
20m average time
78% success
0/80
Asked in companies
Samsung R&D InstituteSalesforceSamsung

You have been given a grid containing some oranges. Each cell of this grid has one of the three integers values:

  • Value 0 - representing an empty cell.
  • Value 1 - representing a fresh orange.
  • Value 2 - representing a rotten orange.
  • Every second, any fresh orange that is adjacent(4-directionally) to a rotten orange becomes rotten.

    Your task is to find out the minimum time after which no cell has a fresh orange. If it's impossible to rot all the fresh oranges then print -1.

    Note:
    1. The grid has 0-based indexing.
    2. A rotten orange can affect the adjacent oranges 4 directionally i.e. Up, Down, Left, Right.
    
    Problem approach

    Create an empty queue Q. 
    Find all rotten oranges and enqueue them to Q. Also, enqueue a delimiter to indicate the beginning of the next time frame.
    Run a loop While Q is not empty and do the following while the delimiter in Q is not reached
    Dequeue an orange from the queue, and rot all adjacent oranges. 
    While rotting the adjacent, make sure that the time frame is incremented only once. And the time frame is not incremented if there are no adjacent oranges.
    Dequeue the old delimiter and enqueue a new delimiter. The oranges rotten in the previous time frame lie between the two delimiters.
    Return the last time frame.

    Try solving now

    Here's your problem of the day

    Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

    Skill covered: Programming

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