Amazon Interview Experience for SDE-1 (2021)
By Kiara
Hi All,
Today I am going to talk about my interview experience with Amazon for SDE-1.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t make it (:
Dreams and Reality
Amazon is a dream company to many software engineers. Getting into Amazon is not that easy.
I mean… there are blogs and videos telling you how to vigorously prepare for the interview.
Some even say they had to practice for over a year before applying to Amazon.
That’s INSANE! To keep preparing for an interview for over a year.
But then, we have to work hard for our dreams.
And who am I to judge them? I didn’t even make it 🤷🏻♀️
Application Process (SDE-1, Amazon)
Anyway, I’ll start by explaining the procedure.
Well… this is a bit embarrassing, not sure if this is normal.
So the thing is — I had been applying for jobs at Amazon since I started my career (in 2019),
but I never got shortlisted :/
I keep applying on Amazon’s website whenever a suitable opening is posted.
June Breakthrough
Around June second week, I got a LinkedIn InMail from an Amazon recruiter
regarding the SDE-1 opening and a link for the same was shared.
So I applied for that opening.
After a couple of days, I got a mail saying that I am shortlisted and I’ll have to go through an online assessment in order to move forward.
The next day I received a mail with the link for the online assessment,
and it said I could take the test anytime in the next 4 days.
It also had links for mock tests to understand the test pattern.
Online Assessment Overview
The online assessment consisted of:
- 🧠 2 coding questions (problem-solving skills)
- 📝 Work style survey questions
After solving the problems, I also had to:
- Explain why I chose the approach
- Mention the time complexity
- Ensure code covered all edge cases
You can code in any language — I prefer JavaScript.
Problem-Solving Questions (Amazon OA)
1. Amazon Music Pairing Problem
Amazon Music is working on a new feature to pair songs together to play while on the bus.
The goal of this feature is to select two songs from a list that will end exactly 30 seconds before the listener reaches their stop.
Each song is assigned a unique ID, numbered from 0 to N-1.
You can check the full description on this link.
2. Connect N Ropes with Minimum Cost
Classic problem — given n ropes, connect them with minimum total cost.
You can check the full description on this link.
I answered both questions and covered all edge cases.
It went pretty well. I had practiced some similar questions on GeeksforGeeks before starting the test.
In my experience, it was somewhat easy.
To Be Continued...
I’ll give details about the further process in my next blog 🙂
Too tired to write more, sorry 🙁
Till then, you can check my last blog here.
Thanks for reading!
xx,
Kiara
PS: This is my first Tech Blog XD
Update: Part two is here