Timeline: Online Assessment: January 2025 Loop Interviews: April 2025

Round 1 – Technical + Behavioral (SDE-2) Duration: 1 hour

• 0.5 hr Behavioral: Focus on Amazon Leadership Principles. Asked about ownership, bias for action, and delivering results.
• 0.5 hr Technical: Unbounded Knapsack problem – minimize box combinations to reach a target.
  • I explained the brute-force recursive approach, then optimized using top-down DP with memoization.

Follow-up: Asked to modify the solution for Bounded Knapsack (each box can be used only a certain number of times).

Round 2 – Managerial Round Duration: 1 hour

Experience: Disorganized and unclear.

• Interviewer was confused, used a personal laptop, and struggled with tech setup (mic/camera on/off).
• No question was shared via the code editor.
• Verbally described a vague Elevator System Design OOP problem and kept adding unrelated helper methods.
• Frequent interruptions, poor structure, and lack of clarity.

Feedback: Amazon should evaluate interviewers based on their ability to conduct structured, effective interviews—not solely on seniority.

Round 3 – Technical + Behavioral (SDE-2) Duration: 1 hour

• 0.5 hr Behavioral:
  • Question 1: Delivered a critical project under a tight deadline. Asked to elaborate on trade-offs and sacrifices made.
  • Question 2: Made a long-term decision sacrificing short-term gain. Asked to explain the rationale and business impact.
• 0.5 hr Technical:
  • Simulated Unix find command functionality.
    • 1: Search and return all files over a certain size (5MB) in a directory tree.
    • 2: Search and return all .xml files in a directory.
  • Implemented recursive DFS traversal with filtering logic.

Technical rounds were structured and focused, with clear problem statements. However, the managerial round was disorganized and poorly executed. Amazon should ensure senior-level interviewers are prepared and not improvising mid-interview.