This is a three-step process:

1. Online Assessment: If you study your LeetCode, this is really easy. If you do well enough here, you'll be moved to the phone screening. If you do exceptionally well on the OA, they'll move you directly to the on-site interview.

2. Phone Screening: I was moved directly to the on-site, so I don't know how this stage typically proceeds.

3. On-site Interview: In my experience, this was incredibly unfair.

Before the on-site, there's a meeting with other candidates where a recruiter explains the interview format and what to look out for. During this meeting, we were told twice that SDE1 candidates are not expected to answer System Design questions.

However, exactly four days before my scheduled interview, I was instructed to sign up for BlueScape, a tool AWS uses for System Design questions. This left me with only four days to study System Design for an SDE1 role.

During the interview day, I was asked multiple behavioral questions along with four coding questions. The coding questions were straightforward; if you've studied LeetCode sufficiently, you should be fine. One of my interviewers, who was at the SDE2 level, did not understand how recursion worked. This was a massive red flag for me, but I was able to explain and test my answer without issue.

The final question I received was a System Design question, which I answered to the best of my ability given the limited time.

I did not receive an offer. They did not provide any feedback, but I am certain it was due to my response on the System Design question. This is why I feel the experience was incredibly unfair. Why would a candidate be told they don't need to worry about System Design, only to be presented with a System Design question just four days before the interview?

It was incredibly unfair, and I hope other candidates seeking an SDE1 role don't have the same experience.

Standard LeetCode questions involving DFS, Two-Pointers, and graph traversal.