Amazon

I applied for the Amazon SDE Intern position through an off-campus opening and was first invited to complete an online assessment. The assessment had two coding problems along with Amazon's behavioural/work-style component. The coding questions were not straightforward implementation problems; I had to identify the appropriate algorithm from the constraints and then make sure the solution handled the less obvious cases. In one reported off-campus internship process, the two DSA questions were based on graphs and sliding-window techniques and were described as medium to hard. The assessment also included questions related to Amazon's Leadership Principles. After clearing the assessment, I received an interview invitation. My technical discussion started with a short introduction and questions about one of my projects. I had to explain the architecture, some of the implementation choices I had made, and how different components communicated with each other. The interviewer then moved into DSA. One of the problems involved finding the number of negative values in a matrix whose rows and columns were sorted in decreasing order. I initially explained a straightforward approach and then optimized it by taking advantage of the matrix's ordering, bringing the complexity down to O(m+n). I was also asked to design a data structure supporting insert, delete and getRandom operations in O(1), for which I discussed combining a vector with a hash map. This type of project discussion followed by DSA has also been reported in an off-campus Amazon SDE Intern experience. I found that explaining my thought process was just as important as reaching the final code. For each problem, I tried to start with the simplest possible solution, explain why it might not satisfy the constraints, and then move towards the optimized approach. I also discussed time and space complexity before finishing the implementation. The process did not end with an offer for me, and I was ultimately rejected. Looking back, the biggest takeaway for me was that Amazon's internship interviews could go beyond the standard DSA format. Other recent off-campus experiences have included two technical interviews, with one round containing DSA and another involving behavioural questions followed by an unexpected parking-lot design discussion. Overall, the experience made me realize that preparing for Amazon required more than solving coding questions. I needed to be comfortable discussing my own projects in depth, explaining algorithmic decisions under time pressure, and preparing for Leadership Principles and practical problem-solvi