Made it to Amazon and Microsoft - Part 1

Happy to share that I got offers from Microsoft L64 and Amazon L5. Solved 503 LC questions overtime. Started to grind LC for a month. I believe I was at 350 mark when I started in Feb. Except while having my meals and sleeping I was constantly preparing. I’m going to collect all the materials that helped me, post on GitHub to help the broader community.

I won’t be sharing the actual questions but can tell you the topics I got and an avid Leetcoder will be able to narrow it. Both interviews were polar opposites. I’ll share my experience here at r/LeetCodeUS page and please comment here if you wanna know anything I’ll reply asap. The other sub is very clumsy. I’ll try to give as much as details so all job seekers can take something from it. Happy to help fellow coders to end up in a place where they love!

Experience with Amazon: Worst interviewers of my life. Interviewed for L6, I cleared all rounds but they filled the role internally while I got positive feedback for 4/5 rounds I was given an option to relocate for L6 or take top of the band L5 wherever I’m located. Chose the later. HR will be so nice to you before you interview and post interview you will be treated like shit leaving you on limbo. I had LP asked in all rounds at Amazon, I have 8 years of strong experience and LP stories so I’ll skip the basics.

Round 1 - phone screen -Super chill 2d array question that I solved probably 5 times. LC Med - last 30 day list. Interviewer was very sweet to talk to, let me code and I spoke every line as I typed. Went very well. HR got back next day saying I did well and scheduled loop.

Round 2 - Loop 1 - Graph question (LC Hard). Immediately pasted the question and the interviewer was like “share your screen as you type”. This was very weird. I shared it immediately as I didn’t have anything to cheat but I felt like they didn’t trust a candidate who is interviewing and honestly a turn off. They had live code where they can literally see what I type. Anyway, shared it and I didn’t cover minor edge cases. Interviewer indirectly asked me about it, I got the hint and added the code for it. Coded early so they gave a follow up to improvise and I coded that too. This interview went for 1h 15 mins as they proceeded to talk about the team. Guess they liked me so they were very detailed and I appreciate that.

Round 3 - Loop 2 - SD with manager. Worst interview of my entire life. Bluescape tool, again “share your screen”. The problem with stupid share your screen is it minimizes their face as I like to work in a window that’s maximized and it looks like I’m looking all over. Anyway, still did. Verbally says a super long 2 minute question, when I asked clarifying questions they said “you should tell me it’s your design.” I was like “ok I’m assuming …..” immediately interrupts and said why will you assume, listen to your question again. You cannot assume, you cannot ask for requirements and I don’t know how to even design without interaction. As I typed every word I explained but still every single thing I typed, every service I made she had to critic that. I worked in a distributed environment, so I always got used to design things that are scalable. Repeatedly cut me saying “you are designing for 1 person only”. Don’t think about million users and I don’t want that. I’m very good at design as I’ve done design and implementation at my work. Went with high confidence in this round and it was super hard to work with. Interviewer is supposed to make you feel comfortable as they are your potential future manager and not treat me like shit. I was talking about my approach. I created a box for requirement wrote bullet points, changed header from “requirements” to “assumptions” as they didn’t really give me a requirement. Then put a box to talk about API design and schema. They were like we are into 10 mins and we didn’t design anything. Understood they want the flow, jumped right into it. Took 5 mins to quickly sketch. She didn’t have much to talk after and asked how each service works. Then critics, “your service is very good for one person only and it’s skewed for that”. I said I’ll just breakdown everything here and that’s what I intended to do but you specifically told “do not scale up and it’s for only 1 user”. She said fine. I felt like shit and got no respect from them after this interview. It was more like “hey I need this design do and die”. I was little intimidated by them and I didn’t want to work for such a manager but still kept it professional.

Round 4 - Loop 3: Bar raiser - the best interviewer so far. Graph question - LC hard - Dijkstra. Started off with a small talk for 2 mins then talked about the structure of interview. Throughout I felt valued and was so comfortable to talk to. When he pasted the coding question I asked “do you want me to share your screen?” Says no, I can see what you type. Lovely! Trust!! That matters. Happily typed it out, he tried to make even harder. I coded that as well. Super positive overall. This is the co-worker you want to work with. How you treat a candidate totally changed the experience IMO.

Round 5 - Loop 4: couple of L5s interviewed - Array manipulation (LC Medium) Amazon tagged but not in 30 days. I voted so probably it is now. The guy who was leading the interview was good, the one who was shadowing was terrible. Purposely tried to make the round hard. Asked follow-ups and that went well. I didn’t give the best solution but my code passed LC and it was slightly inefficient. Still made a note to them why I chose this way to implement.

Post interview - that evening dropped an email to the recruiter thanking them for their effort to coordinate and a formal email that I’m interested. Recruiter mentioned earlier that they will tell me in 4 days or max 5 days. Got ghosted after that. Followed up on 4th day mark - no reply, 5th day, 6th day, 7th day, 8th day - no reply. I emailed the manager expressing my disappointment that I value transparency in the process but kept it very professional. 9th day calling to say I got an offer. We spoke about numbers and now it’s been 3 days they are emailing and I’m ghosting them. UNO reverse but planning to reply on the 5th day professionally saying I would like to withdraw my candidacy.

This post is super long than I planned so I’ll write a part 2. You will totally get why I rejected Amazon. Hope this was helpful!