New Grad Amazon SDE 1 Interview Experiences：Offer！

Company Introduction: Preferences for Amazon SDE Interview

There are four main points:
· Emphasis on system design: the ability to design distributed systems with high availability and scalability.
· Behavioral interviews: Candidates are thoroughly assessed to determine whether they align with Amazon’s leadership principles.
· Programming languages: Java is one of the commonly used languages, but Python and others are also accepted.
· AWS experience: Familiarity with AWS services is a significant advantage for roles involving cloud development.

Interview Process

First Round: Behavioral
· Describe a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer. How did you manage this situation? (Customer Obsession)
Use specific examples to tell a story centered on customer focus.

· Describe a time when you took responsibility for a problem that occurred within your team. How did you handle this situation? (Ownership)
Focus on ownership, use specific examples, and answer in STAR format.

Round 2: Coding
Actual question 1: heap and dictionary (MED)

Solution approach:
· Key-based heap implementation:
Maintain a dual structure of a heap and a dictionary. The heap is used to maintain the order of elements, while the dictionary is used for fast lookup and updates. When deleting an element, mark it as None in the dictionary instead of directly removing it from the heap (this would destroy the heap structure). During the pop operation, skip these elements marked as None.

· Value-based heap implementation:

A counter count is added to each heap element to handle cases where values are equal, ensuring the stability of the heap.

· Composite key heap implementation:
This requires more complex sorting logic, such as sorting by priority first, and then by key when priorities are equal. Elements in the heap can be sorted based on multiple conditions, making it very suitable for complex priority queue scenarios.

Real question 2: Design a social network to find the friend relationship path between two people (A and B).

Solution Approach: Model the problem as a graph theory problem, where people are nodes and friend relationships are edges. Find the shortest path using the classic BFS algorithm.

Follow-up 1: How to return the lexicographically smallest path?
Slightly modify the standard BFS algorithm. Before adding a node's neighbors to the queue, sort the neighbor list lexicographically to ensure that paths with earlier lexicographic order are explored first.

Follow-up 2: Return the names of friends on the path as a list.

During BFS, use a Map to record each node's “parent node.” Once B is found, trace back to A from B using the parent node pointer to reconstruct the entire path.

Round 3: Behavioral + LLD

LP Questions:

1. How would you resolve disagreements with teammates over solutions?
2. How do you grow and improve yourself during the work process? LLD: Two-dimensional grid matching words Store target words using a Trie tree, traverse the grid using DFS, and optimize with dynamic pruning. Even though the Trie node deletion was not fully implemented, the approach and pruning were recognized. In fact, interviewers value your clear thinking more than complete code.

Interview Summary & Suggestions

The interview process at Yama is basically like this. When preparing, practice more problems and mock interviews. I hope everyone preparing for interviews has a smooth process and receives many offers. If you have any questions, feel free to consult ProgramHelp—ProgramHelp helps you directly reach your ideal offer.