I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2013
Interview
Applied in January through both recruiter and online. They contacted me within a week to schedule phone interviews, which mostly focused on technical aspects. I was asked a few questions, including comparing between different data structures. I prepared for the interviews by studying linked lists, binary trees, and graph algorithms. I was friendly with the interviewers and they were friendly back to me.
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
How would you implement an Autocomplete feature and what data structures would you use to do so?
Write a class that takes in a window size (n) in its constructor. The only method in the class takes in an integer, adds it into a sequence of numbers with that value, and returns the average of the last n values inserted into the sequence. Do not iterate over the sequence to calculate the average. Couldn't use STL.
For example, if window size (n) is 2:
update(1) returns 1
update(2) returns 1.5
update(3) returns 2.5
update(4) returns 3.5
Given: List<String> getActors(String actorName)
This function takes an actor and returns all the actors they acted with in their career. Use this function to calculate the degrees of separation between one actor to another.
Group input strings by permutations and output as a set. For example, if your input is: "abc, acb, bce, dce, cde" then your output is: "(abc, acb) (bce) (dce, cde)". Assume all input strings are of the same size. Didn't actually have to write the code for this one, but rather gave an in-depth step-by-step explanation using data structures and time and space complexity.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Vancouver, BC)
Interview
One online assessment and one virtual interview included a coding round and leadership principle questions; overall, the process was fairly straightforward and not overly challenging for me throughout the experience.
2 rounds:
1st round: 3 behaviorals: Tell me about yourself, tell me about a time you used Gen AI, tell me about a time you faced a problem in one of your experiences
Leetcode similar to LRU Cache but a variant
2nd round: 3 more behaviorals; tell me about yourself, a specific experience in my internship, a time you disagreed with manager/peer on a project
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA)
Interview
Pretty difficult OA didn't need to get full score. One round technical interview with SDE. Interview was pretty easy, most people I knew at school and friends ended up passing the interview. Took about 1 month to hear back after interview
