I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2012
Interview
Submitted my resume online on their website and recieved an email from their recruiter to schedule a phone interview. After clearing the first phone interview , second one was schedule , got through it too. I was invited on campus to Seattle for face 2 face interviews. Had five(4 technical + 1 behavioral) 1:1 interviews , did well in 2 , 1 was ok and 2 were bad. They called me after a week and informed me that they want to pursue other candidates. On whole it was really a good experience. Brush up Data Structures and Algorithms. Make sure you're strong as hell in atleast one programming language preferably C++/Java
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Phone Interviews:
1) Least Common Ancestor of 2 nodes in a binary tree
2) Trim extra spaces in a given String.
3) Check whether given linked list is circular or not
4) Design a restaurant reservation system
Face to Face:
1) System Design question . Implement "File" java class. He went deep in to the design specifics , asked me to design cache , handle parallel access , efficient data structures to do it etc..,
2) Integers are arriving at a rate of one on a socket stream. At any given time print k largest numbers. Describe an efficient algorithm and implement it in language of your choice.
3) Given a binary tree and an integer S , print all distinct paths from root to leaves which sum to S. Describe the algorithm and implement it.
4)Write a program to print the largest sub string which is a palindrome in a given string. He asked me to optimize it with O(n) solution
5) Given a list of nodes , Node class has fields value(of type integer) , next(of type Node) , other(of type Node) where next points to next node and other points to some arbitrary node in the list. Make a copy of the list. Describe an efficient algorithm and implement it.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
Um teste de código online, se aprovado, vai para o loop. O loop é 4 entrevistas seguidas, duas em inglês e duas em português. 3 entrevistas técnicas de código, todas as 4 têm pergunta de liderança.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Pergunta historicas baseada nos principios de lideranca da amazon.