Round 1 (OA)

Got 2 standard Amazon OA questions. I was able to solve both and passed all test cases. After that, there was a 12-30 minute Behavioral and Feedback round. A few days later, I received a call from the recruiter stating that I had been selected for further rounds and my interviews would be scheduled soon. She further informed me that I would have 2 technical and 2 managerial rounds.

Round 2 (Technical Interview - 1)

After 20-25 days, I received an interview email. It was conducted on Amazon Chime and lasted for 1 hour. The interviewer was an SDE-2. After basic introductions, they asked 2 LeetCode medium questions, both of which I was able to solve. The interviewer also asked 1 question based on Leadership Principles (LP). Although the question was not direct, I was able to infer what the interviewer expected and answered accordingly. (Here I understood why everyone says Amazon interviewers are obsessed with LP). The interviewer was very supportive, actively listened to my responses, and closely watched my code as I wrote it.

Round 3 (Technical Round - 2)

About 10 minutes after the first round, I received another email for a second round and was asked to join the meeting within the next 20 minutes. This round also lasted for 1 hour and was conducted by an SDE-2. After basic introductions, I was presented with 2 LeetCode medium questions. I was able to solve one question completely. For the second question, with only 20 minutes remaining, I explained my approach. Following this, I was asked 1 LP question, again not a direct one. The interviewer here was also very supportive.

Round 4 (Managerial and CS Core Concepts, as told by the recruiter)

About 1 hour after Round 2, I received an email from the recruiter stating that I had been selected for the next round. Round 4 was scheduled for late evening (after office hours). This round was with a manager. After basic introductions, they asked me 2 coding questions: one was graph-based, and the other was array-based. The interviewer copy-pasted these questions from LeetCode but did not copy them or the test cases correctly (I checked after the interview). It took me 20 minutes just to read the question. After that, they explained the question, but it was only a vague explanation. I somehow wrote the code based on my understanding, but of course, it was deemed an incorrect solution. We then moved to the second question, and the same thing happened. (After the interview, I literally checked on LeetCode; the test case was copied incorrectly, and an important part of the question was missing). I asked for an explanation of the input and output but received a vague explanation that confused me further. Here too, I somehow wrote the code based on that test case, but the solution was, of course, wrong. Exactly at the 1-hour mark, they disconnected the call, and I did not hear back from the recruiter after that.

From this round, I gained the experience that late-evening interviews will hardly go right. Throughout the day, I was also working, and by that time, I was exhausted. I think the same happened with the interviewer.

One of the questions on the OA was Rotating the Box from LeetCode.

Link: https://leetcode.com/problems/rotating-the-box/description/