Amazon Software Development Engineer interview questions

I applied via a referral and had 2 rounds. First round is an online coding round in which you need to find bugs in the code. The codes are really simple, basic sorting, printing patterns etc. Second round is a phone interview where they asked me 3 questions.

Pretty standard interview process with an assortment of technical and behavioral interviews on-site. From what I observed, unlike any other company which nitpicks people from a group of interviewees, AWS has many positions than they could interview for. All one has to do is surpass their minimum bar*. I had 6 back to back interviews without any break. Even lunch is an interview, where I decided not to continue my lunch after getting carried with the interviewer's questions :D (He is a great guy). My advice is to prepare yourselves by training for 5-6 hour long sprints without any breaks, at least the week before interviews. Because, the real challenging interview is the final bar-raiser. Until then, it was all fun, but I'm totally tired by this interview. The bar raiser: I was interviewed by two people, one being the active interviewer (in training) and the other being a proctor (This guy didn't talked a word in the entire interview). I was asked a dynamic programming problem, directly from CTCI's hard problems. But I hadn't looked at it before (realized it was from CTCI after interviews), and had trouble figuring it out. He provided some hints, some in the wrong direction, but I was so tired and couldn't think much better than brute force solution. In the last 2 minutes, I figure out the solution and provided a gist, but the hiring manager has been waiting outside, and the interview has to be called off before they could ask any questions about my approach. Overall, the interview process is really good, and faster than any other company. Recruiters can be slow, but once you are streamlined for onsite interviews, everything moves so quickly. They should also provide hiring decision in less than a week time. Unfortunately, I didn't made it, which I'm sure is for performance in bar raiser (After self analysis, I thought I wouldn't hire myself, if I'm the hiring manager). But the hiring manager is very positive, and guaranteed to provide another interview after 6 months. We are in touch through LinkedIn. Here is what I think could be a road map for successful interview at Amazon (or any others): 1. At least 6 months of strong practice (3 - 4 hours a day) in Data Structures, Algorithms and Problem Solving. 2. Attention to detail, flexible in solving incoming problems on the fly (The inteviewer can dramatically change the problem structure on the fly), thinking of all test cases and corner cases before saying done. 3. Sources like CTCI, GeeksForGeeks.org, LeetCode are really helpful in developing general problem solving skills.