DEV Community: Jinesh Shah

The ultimate guide to land a Software Engineering job at Big Tech

Jinesh Shah — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

[Author’s Note: At nearly 5,000 words, you probably don’t want to try reading this on a mobile device. Bookmark it and come back later.]

I am a software engineer who has worked at Microsoft and Google. A while back, I went on a 120 - day long job search journey, aced more than 30 interviews, and landed multiple offers.

During my preparation and discussions with other candidates, I discovered that though there’s a lot of information about interviewing, some of the critical details are missing or hidden deep inside experience posts. Details like communicating your story, communicating your level through system design, or negotiating the offer when the time comes.

If any of you readers know me personally, I like to keep things organized, and I have kept a record of all the resources and steps that helped me get multiple offers from the big tech companies. This article will be a sum total of all the resources I used and the experiences I gained.

My goal is to create a blueprint and a roadmap that can be used by any candidate on their next job search.

Originally published at https://jinesh.codes on 21st February 2022.

Target Audience

Experienced Software engineer
Applying for an Individual Contributor role at big tech companies (i.e. Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc.)
Targeting mid to senior engineering level

Note: If you are interested in a similar post for junior developers, please drop it in the comments or DM me. If there are a lot of interested folks, I will consider making one for junior developers too.

Motivation

Most people I talk to hate the job search and interview process. The top reason I have heard is “the process is flawed, and I want to get it over with as soon as possible.”

I agree that the interview process is flawed, but we can use the flawed system to our advantage through systematic planning and consistent efforts.

Also, a clear motivation is that If you follow the blueprint described in the article, with the job change, you would be able:

Level up your compensation. I have seen people increase their compensation from anywhere between 30% to 200% when they change jobs.
Level up your career. By communicating your story and acing the system design interview, you would target Levels at or above your current job.
Find a job that genuinely interests you.

Based on my observations of all my friends finding new jobs, I firmly believe that if you are doing good in your current role, you will get a new job that you would love. One of the reasons is that it is currently a candidate's market, with every major tech company hiring.

Don’t believe me that you could get that higher pay? You could look at some analysis done by Matthew Dean in this article here.

You will need a slightly higher time commitment to follow this blueprint, but it would be well worth investing time and effort.

Interview Process Overview

The interview process will look something like this:

Recruiter Call → Phone Screen → Onsite Interview (4-6 sessions) → Offer stage

Recruiter call

This is typically a 15-30 minute call with a recruiter to discuss your interest in the company. Before talking with any recruiters, you should already have clarity on your goals for your next job. (Which you have listed as a part of your story). This call aims to communicate those goals and your story and discuss a potential mutual fit.

Also, remember that once a recruiter schedules interviews for you, they will be your biggest ally and a friend throughout the process. Well, at least until negotiation begins. (I hope you realize that they have a vested interest in you succeeding in the interviews and signing an offer.)
You should feel free to ask them for any help or resources you need. Most of the resources and links in this blog are provided by recruiters I worked with during my job search.

Post this call, you will move to the phone screens.

Phone screen

This interview is typically a 45 to 60-minute video call with a software engineer where you are expected to share your screen and code live on a text editor. You will likely work on a DS/Algo problem. And for most companies, this round is an elimination round as the intent is to decide whether the company should invite you onsite (on their campus) for interviews.
Note: You should clarify with your recruiter what to expect.

Before doing these interviews, you should be thoroughly prepared for the Algorithm interviews. Your objective for this interview is to demonstrate your technical ability, ask insightful questions to your interviewer after the coding portion, and move forward to the onsite.

Onsite interviews

The onsite typically last between 4 to 6 rounds at the company campus itself, but the global pandemic has pushed this to be conducted virtually. This is an advantage for the candidate as now we can stagger and schedule rounds for the time that works well for us and not be forced to use our vacation days for every onsite.

You will face algorithm problem solving, system design, and behavioural and experience interviews. You should be excited to meet many people and enthusiastically demonstrate your technical skills. The objective for the onsite is to give strong positive signals and data points to move forward to the offer stage.

Offer stage

You've made it this far, woohoo! At this stage, all you need to do is to determine whether this is the right opportunity for you and to negotiate the package that makes you happy and excited to sign and join.

Weekly Schedule

I have taken the liberty to create a 15-week schedule assuming that you will consistently be preparing and interviewing part-time. You can shorten or elongate this schedule accounting for your situation.

Week 1 : Ramp up and process understanding

Draft your story and polish your resume to signal the target level and scope
Research Companies you might be interested to apply
Understand the interview process and get a sense of comp ranges from levels.fyi
Update “open to finding a new job”, with privacy level as recruiters only on LinkedIn.

Week 2-4: DS and Algorithm fundamentals

Review the network, referral and recruiter connect section.
Have a Todo list for algorithms preparation and knock something off the list daily.
Strat solving 2 algorithm problems everyday.
Talk to recruiters and strat scheduling phone screens for week 7 or 8.

Week 5-7: System Design fundamentals

Have a Todo System Design preparation and knock something off the list daily.
Continue solving 2 algorithm problems every day.
Take the system design readiness checkpoint to see where you stand.

Week 8-9: Technical phone screens and Mock interviews

Complete the phone screens for most companies
Start Mock interviews at pramp.io for both System design and Algorithms.
Keep studying system design based on feedback.
Draft your STAR examples for behavioral rounds.
Start scheduling onsite interviews.

Week 10 -13: Ace the Onsite

Stay calm and focused, and best of luck
Ask the recruiter for feedback one day after any onsite interview round.

Week 14-15: Offer Stage

Review offer stage section on the blog.
Once you sign, send me the notes on how the blueprint can be improved.

If you like to use checklist/todo lists, you can find the above schedule in a checklist format on this google doc. (Feel free to make your own copy and check things off as you complete it.)

Start Here

My recommendation is to follow the weekly schedule by copying this google doc and ticking things off as you complete them.

Your story

Now that you have decided to start the job search process let's talk about what you want your career to look like. I recommend drafting answers to the following questions, which we will term as your story:

Why did you join your last company?
What did you do at your last job?
Why are you leaving? And why now?
What are some things you would want to continue doing at your new job?
What else are you looking for in your new job?

It may not look like it now, but many things in the following steps will depend on how you answer these questions. Here is an example of my story from when I started the job search.
Identify and Shortlist companies.
Based on your story and goals, come up with a list of 7-10 companies you want to interview with. You will find some companies that are more interesting than others. Sort the list into two buckets: backup and target companies. These buckets will come in handy while scheduling your onsite interviews.

Levelling and compensation

Get a sense of levels and compensation from levels.fyi. If you are unsure what level you should target, consider talking to your connections at that company before you apply to understand your target level.

A word on resume

Make sure you make a clean and polished resume. Ideally, most of the bullet points in your resume should follow the XYZ format.

"Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z]."

Related resources:

Network and Linkedin

I believe most of my readers are already on Linkedin and have an all-star LinkedIn profile. If not, the first thing you should do is create an all-star LinkedIn profile.

I emphasize so much on having a LinkedIn profile because, during my job search, I was contacted by over 35 recruiters on LinkedIn, which resulted in me starting the conversations with 6 companies.

While we are on this topic, I would recommend all of you to go and enable open opportunities with the privacy setting as only recruiters on your LinkedIn. You can find the steps here. [Make sure the privacy is to set recruiters only and not public.]

The second reason to have a decent Linkedin profile is to build a network that supports you and may have connections that could refer you to the companies you are interested in. Referrals are the best way to get noticed and start the process. Followed closely by starting a conversation with the recruiters that reach out to you. Direct applications should be your last resort.

Tips for Recruiter conversation

This is usually the first conversation you have with the company. As already mentioned in the above section, your recruiter will be your ally and a friend throughout the process. Well, at least until negotiation begins. You should understand that not all recruiters are created equally, and some are better than others. But you should remember to always be cheerful, polite and classy. Make your recruiter part of your team and work with them to get your desired package.

A recruiter may ask at this stage what your expected compensation is. I personally would recommend against giving any numbers this early. Instead, focus the discussion on determining mutual fit and levelling. It's better to discuss numbers at the offer stage. If a recruiter keeps pushing, you can tell them a range at the top of your level* and make sure to emphasize that you know the company is competitive and you are sure that a mutual agreement can be reached.

*You can use levels.fyi to get an idea of what the salary ranges are for your level.

Also, look at the negotiation section in this article if more information is needed.

The interviewer’s Perspective

If you have ever been on the other side of the interview table or on a hiring committee, you would know that while making the decision, two words keep getting thrown around a lot, i.e. signal and data-point. If you haven’t, don’t worry, I am here to explain.

The interviewer’s job is to get as many signals and data points as possible. So, now you ask what these signals are? A signal is a piece of information that demonstrates your specific skills, knowledge, and experience.

For example, when I am interviewing, I would look for the following signals:

Coachability signal: This signal accounts for how well the candidate responded to hints and feedback, whether they were open to feedback, and whether they leveraged the feedback to improve their solution. This signal is typically analyzed during both problem solving and system design interviews.

Coding signal: This signal accounts for -- how deeply does this candidate understand, and how effective are they at actually coding? This is analyzed during the Problem-solving interview.

System design: This signal accounts for -- is this candidate experienced and capable of designing and leading a large technical system? This is analyzed during the systems design interview.

Collaboration and Management signal: This signal accounts for — is this candidate capable of either working with or managing a group of people. This signal also accounts for the candidate's experience in collaborating with or managing large teams. This is analyzed during the behavioural/experience interview.

There are a few more signals that different companies look out for. For example, companies like Google and Amazon look for a signal that accounts for navigating through ambiguity.

Now, you know what the interviewers look for in an interview. Your job during each interview is to emit the signals that demonstrate you are fit for the role and showcase your seniority.

Data structures, Algorithms and Problem solving Interview Preparation

Tech interviews are hard. Imagine being assessed to implement optimal solutions while communicating your thoughts within a nerve-wracking 45 minutes interview.

The good part is you can get better at them with preparation and practice. The preparation includes:

Understanding the interview expectation.
Grasping DS and algorithms fundamentals.
Learning to stick to a structured approach to communicate well.

Problem solving Interview Expectation

Programming Languages: Most companies do not require that you know any specific programming language before interviewing for a technical position, but familiarity with a significant language is generally a prerequisite for success. Not only should you be familiar with the syntax of a language, but you should also be familiar with some of the languages’ nuances, such as how memory management works, the most commonly used collections or libraries, etc.

Data Structures: You’ll be expected to understand the inner workings of common data structures and be able to compare and contrast their usage in various applications. You will be expected to know the runtimes for common operations and memory use.

Algorithms: Your interview will not focus on rote memorization; however, understanding the most common algorithms will likely make solving some of the questions we ask a lot easier. Knowing the runtimes, theoretical limitations, and basic implementation strategies of different classes of algorithms is more important than memorizing the specific details of any given algorithm.

Coding: Expect to be asked to write syntactically correct code—no pseudo code. A few missed commas or typos here, and there aren’t that big of a deal, but the goal is to write code that’s as close to production-ready as possible. This is your chance to show off your coding ability.

Related resources:

Data structure and Algorithm fundamentals

My recommendations

My recommendation is to first understand the interview framework, then understand the foundations and concepts and finally deep dive into algorithms. Here is the recommended plan:

The first step is to understand the problem solving framework. Cracking the Code Interview (CTCI) is the best resource for this. Read chapters 1 to 7. These chapters thoroughly break down the framework for solving the algorithm interview. Internalize these chapters and apply this methodology when solving any algorithm question in an interview.
Review foundations by reading the following chapters in either CTCI or EPI. Here are some of the topics from the top of my mind: Strings, Arrays, Linked Lists, Stacks, Queues, Heaps, Trees, Hash Tables and Maps, Searching and Sorting, Recursion, Dynamic Programming, Greedy Algorithms, Graphs and graph traversals.
Deep dive into algorithms:
- If you have to start fresh or haven't reviewed Algorithms in a while :
- Coursera - Algorithms, Part 1 - Follow the lectures and code the algorithm, ds in a word doc after every lecture. [I recommend watching at 2x]
- Coursera - Algorithms, Part 2 - This is optional as only a couple of companies (like Google and Directi) expect advanced algorithm concepts.
- If you had studied DS and Algorithms recently and are only reviewing the concepts, then review the top few articles for each DS and algorithm on geeks for geeks.
- Geeks for geeks - Data Structures
- Geeks for geeks - Algorithms

Other resources for DS, Algo and coding fundamentals

bigocheatsheet
Book: Beautiful code
Book: Elements of Programing Interview
Coding Interview University
Course: Udacity - Intro to Algorithms
MIT Open courseware - Introduction to Algorithms (not very efficient)
Google Style Guides for: C++, Python, Java

Coding practice

When you practice, do not use an IDE. You need to be able to write legible, compilable code without help regarding the layout or spelling of standard library class/method names. I suggest solving algorithmic/DS problems on a word document or on paper to simulate an actual interview.

Note: Some companies may have an integrated IDE in the browser window, but most don’t, so it is safer to practice on a standard word document.

My recommendations

If you are new to DS and Algorithm coding, follow the interview bit programming course

Otherwise, you can just solve the blind list: 75 practice questions on leetcode. This list of problems covers various topics to get you ready for any coding interview.

Also, I like to solve a random coding problem daily other than my preparation and practice, and to achieve this, I subscribed to https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/

Other resources for additional practice:

System Design Interview Preparation

Your system design interviewer will likely be a senior engineer who’s going to ask you an open-ended question like “Implement a flight booking system” or “Create a feed for Instagram”.

Your goal will be to drive the conversation for the next 60 minutes, solidify the problem requirements, and design a system that solves it. This is a chance to demonstrate your skills, knowledge, and experience in technical leadership.

System Design Interview Mindset

After tons of conversations with people preparing for this interview, I have realized that most people come in with the mindset that this is an exercise building hypothetical systems. I can see this when candidates say things like they "would not do in real life." and may end up ignoring some of the more significant technical problems they see, thinking this is, after all, just an exercise. But, this emits a wrong signal to the interviewer, who might believe you didn’t see that technical problem. (Just as shown in the meme above.)

You need to change this mindset; instead of building hypothetical systems, let’s build a real system. Imagine driving an actual work meeting at the start of an interview. The meeting aims to solve the given problem by brainstorming the design and roadmap.

At the end of this 1-hour interview, your goal is to have a design roadmap and plan divided as tasks between a team. (This is the Northstar goal, but just the technical design with trade-off might be enough for most interviews.)

Making this small change in mindset will change how you approach this interview. Instead of participating in just a hypothetical discussion, you will lead the discussion and develop a much more realistic design.

High Level Design

HLD interview framework

{:.no_toc}

I personally follow a framework of dividing this interview into 3 phases.

Requirements gathering
Technical Design and trade-offs
Deep Dive and more possible improvements

It is better explained in this step by step guide.

HLD knowledge expectation

{:.no_toc}
Databases

The more you know about how relational and non-relational databases work and what trade-offs exist between them, you will be better prepared. However, most companies don’t assume any particular level of expertise.

Distributed Computing and scaling

While most companies have internal tools that help with scaling, it’s essential to understand a few basic distributed computing concepts. Understanding topics such as service-oriented architectures, map-reduce, distributed caching, load balancing, etc., could help you develop a better design for some of the more complicated distributed architecture questions you might encounter.

Internet and Networking Topics

Most companies expect our engineers to be familiar with the basics of how the internet works. You might want to brush up on how browsers work at a high level, from DNS lookups and TCP/IP to socket connections. They aren’t looking for network engineer qualifications, but a solid understanding of the fundamentals of how the web works is a requirement.

Recommended learning

{:.no_toc}
Try solving the questions in Grokking the system design interview and then go through their provided solutions. This resource is a really great way to learn and internalize how to drive excellent system design discussions.

The Course: Hired in Tech - System Design is also a great resource if you need more learning.

HLD Mock interview readiness Checkpoint

{:.no_toc}

Try answering all the following questions before moving on to prepping and starting mock interviews:

When would you choose a SQL DB over No SQL?
What are different types of data stores to store an image? What are the key things you would look for while selecting your image data store?
Long polling vs web-sockets.
What is an excellent technique to speed up repeated read calls?
Disadvantages of Caching.
What is a CDN? When should you use a CDN?
What is the CAP theorem?
What is the relative performance for HDD, SSD, RAM and network calls.
What are availability and reliability? How would you measure them for a system?
What happens behind the scenes when you open a link in your browser? Do you know what these terms mean: TCP/IP, DNS lookup?

Other resources:
high scalability - examples

Low-Level Design

Note: Not all companies have this round, so check if the companies you are interested in ask these questions. I was faced with an LLD question in Google and Amazon.

You should have a working knowledge of a few common and useful design patterns and know how to write software in an object-oriented way, with appropriate use of inheritance and aggregation. You probably won’t be asked to describe the details of how specific design patterns work but expect to have to defend your design choices.

Resources:

{:.no_toc}

LLD Mock interview readiness Checkpoint

{:.no_toc}

What is concurrency? Do you understand cohesion and consistency?
Do you know how to use at least the following design patterns:
- Strategy pattern
- Observer pattern
- Factory method
- Singleton pattern
Inheritance vs aggregation

Mock Interviews

Mock interviews are the best way to get into the rhythm of interviewing. I recommend doing a few mock coding and system design interviews every week you prepare. This will make sure you know how you are tracking and the areas of improvement. You can use the following sites for Mock interviews:

pramp.com - free mock interviews for Problem solving and HLD system design
interviewing.io - paid

General Interview tips

By now, you should have already gathered all the tips I am planning to share by going through CTCI and Grokking system design. These are some critical things if you didn’t have sufficient time to go through them:

Talk through your thought process about the questions you are asked. In all of the interviews, interviewers evaluate your technical abilities and how you approach problems and how you try to solve them.
Ask clarifying questions if you do not understand the problem or need more information. Many interview questions are deliberately underspecified because interviewers are looking to see how you engage the problem. In particular, they are looking to see which areas leap to your mind as the most critical piece of the technological puzzle you've presented.
Think about ways to improve the solution you'll present. In many cases, the first answer that springs to mind isn't the most elegant solution and may need some refining. It's definitely worthwhile to talk about your initial thoughts to a question, but jumping immediately into presenting a brute force solution will be received less well than taking time to compose a more efficient solution.
You should have a few questions prepared for the interviewer. It goes a long way when you’ve taken the initiative to research the company before your interview.

Other resources:
Google Recruiters Share Technical Interview Tips (30 min)

Behavioral and experience interview

Most people I know don't prepare much for this interview. They feel like the questions are random, and I understand that it’s challenging to make it a priority with all your other todos.But I believe that this interview can make or break the decision to hire you.

The interviewer wants to understand two things:

Are you a culture fit?
What is the right level for you?

I recommend preparing 5-6 strong work examples and stories that share data points with strong positive signals. This will ensure you can answer the interview question while maintaining an excellent flow of information. These work examples need not be fancy or complex. What matters most is that the example is well received and understood by the interviewer. Plus, well-prepped stories are compelling, and the interviewer can see how you feel and can resonate with them. Also, stories are a great way to illustrate your experience, which is crucial in deciding the level.

Here is a sample question where you can demonstrate your experience applying customer obsession:
Discuss a time when you went above and beyond for a customer?

There are multiple ways to answer the above question; I recommend following the STAR method while answering any Leadership principle related questions. STAR stands for “Situation - Task - Action - Results” read more on STAR method.

Once these examples are well-prepped, try answering the behavioural questions listed here for practice.

Tip: this is the list of all questions I had prepped for, and I absolutely rocked every behavioural and experience interview.

Resources:
My blog post - Ace the Amazon Leadership Principle interview questions
STAR Method

Offer Stage

Commendable job on making this far! Once you have got the offers, you can interview the team and the company. You may want to meet the managers and teammates multiple times before making any decision.

A data point to make this clearer: I met 7 different managers at Google before making my team decision. After meeting them, I had follow-up meetings/chats with the ones that had me interested. So, this was basically a reverse interview.
There is an upside if your manager really wants you; the recruiter has an ally for getting you a more suitable offer now.

Note: At some companies like Amazon, you will get to meet only the team/hiring manager for the role you applied to. This is because hiring is mostly driven by the team and not a company-wide level for these companies.

One thing you should do before meeting the Hiring managers is to list down around 7-10 questions that you would want to ask if time permits. These questions can range from general to very team-specific or technology-specific questions. These questions should be designed to gather more information about the team, technology, and manager to make an informed team decision.

Negotiating the best offer

An hour or two of research on negotiating could net you an additional 10-30% pay bump. I would say definitely worth your time!

There is a lot I want to say about negotiating, but I feel it would be best for you to follow the same articles I used to get started and hear it from the horse's mouth:

Once you have read through the above articles, here are a couple of points I want to re-emphasize:

Know your worth and target level (use levels.fyi)
It is better to negotiate over an email than over a call.
Best negotiators are the ones who are ready to walk away

Other great(but long) resource: Salary Negotiation

After you sign the Offer

Party, party and party hard! You have earned it.
Send a note to everyone involved (Maybe even stay connected on LinkedIn)
Let other companies know that you have decided to go another way.
Drop me a message with any feedback/improvements on this blueprint.

Parting advice

Talk to your recruiter. They can help you with unique insights and resources to succeed in the interviews.
Be kind to yourself. The interview process is stressful, and it is easy to blame yourself when things go sideways. Remember that this is not the end. There are many more companies and be kind to yourself.
Always be positive and classy.
Be curious to learn and ask questions.

Aggregated list of recommended resources

Feel free to read other posts related to interview prep and experience on jinesh.codes/interview

Originally published at https://jinesh.codes on 21st February 2022.

Ace the Amazon Leadership Principle interview questions

Jinesh Shah — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 19:48:32 +0000

One of the major differences between interviewing at Amazon and other FAANG companies is their approach to the behavioural interview.

While other companies prefer to have a dedicated behavioural round (For ex. Googlyness for google interview.), amazon makes sure to include a behavioural component as a part of every onsite round. It is just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar. These questions are generally about discussing a situation that demonstrates a specific leadership principle in action.

I had recently interviewed for Amazon, and one of the things that made me stand out as a great candidate was my performance on Behavioural and Leadership principle questions. I have decided to prepare this Guide on Ace the Leadership principle interview questions.

What are the Amazon leadership principles?

The Amazon Leadership principles are 14 core values that guide the company's functioning and its employees. Feel free to skim through them on Amazon's official site, but you are not required to remember all of them.

Based on your past experience, only a subset of these leadership principles would be applicable to your interviews. To me, the following 5 LPs seem appropriate for SDE-II interviews:

Customer Obsession
Learn and be Curious
Deliver results
Dive Deep
Earn Trust

If you are unsure which LPs you should consider prepping for, feel free to talk to your recruiters to clarify expectations. Recruiters are your friends.

There is a debate around whether we prepare for the Behavioural round. The argument against preparing examples beforehand is that you could sound a little too rehearsed in the interview. I am afraid I have to disagree with this, as it is a scheduled interview where you are expected to come prepared, and sounding rehearsed is better than spending 5 minutes of interview doing "Emm.. you know what.. In my … um…organization. I was working on …. Ummm. a project.. Emm.. you know". You get the gist.

Also, while we are on this topic, I cannot stress enough that it is entirely okay to ask your interviewer for a couple of minutes to organize your thoughts and then give a well thought out answer. That is always better than the alternative where you are unsure of the following statements and take five pauses in just one answer.

I recommend preparing 5-6 strong work examples and stories covering one or more LPs each. This will ensure you can answer the interview question while maintaining an excellent flow of information. These work examples need not be fancy or complex. What matters most is that the example is well received and understood by the interviewer. Plus, well-prepped stories are compelling, and the interviewer can see how you feel and can resonate with them. Also, stories are a great way to illustrate your experience.

Here is a sample question where you can demonstrate your experience applying customer obsession:
Discuss a time when you went above and beyond for a customer?

There are multiple ways to answer the above question; I recommend following the STAR method while answering any Leadership principle related questions. STAR stands for "Situation - Task - Action - Results" read more on STAR method.

Other than this, I also recommend doing a few mock interviews that include LP and behavioural questions before the actual interviews. This will help you find weak areas in your answer and give you time to improve upon them.

Good luck preparing for your next change!

Here is a list of questions I had prepared for:

Customer Obsession:

Discuss a time when you went above and beyond for a customer?
Discuss a time when you had a difficult interaction with a customer. How did you deal with it? What was the outcome? How would you handle it differently?
Talk about a time when you were able to anticipate a customer need that they did not know they needed yet. How did you know they needed this, and how did they respond?
Talk about the time when you asked for customer feedback. How did you leverage feedback to drive innovation or improvement? How did the customer and your team respond?
Talk about a time when you evaluated the customer experience of your product or service. What was the result, and what did you do next? Sometimes customers make an unreasonable request; talk about a time when you had to push back or say no to a customer request. How did the customer respond? Would you have done anything differently?

Learn and be curious:

Describe the time when you had to work outside of the comfort area. How did you identify what you need to be successful, how did you go about building the expertise to build your goal, and were you able to meet your goal?
Talk about a time when you realized you needed a deeper level of subject matter expertise to do your job well. What did you do about it, what was the outcome, and was anything that could have been done differently?
Talk about a time when you did not know what to do next or how to solve a challenging problem. How do you learn what you did not know, what were the options you considered, how did you decide the best path forward, and the outcome?
We all have things about ourselves that we want to improve at work. Give an example of something you have worked on to improve your overall work effectiveness and the process and impact.

Deliver results

Give an example of a project when you were able to deliver a project with a tight deadline, the sacrifices you needed to make, and how it impacted the final deliverable and the outcome.
Talk about a time when you had a significant, unanticipated obstacle to overcome in achieving a goal. What was the obstacle, and were you eventually successful and thing differently.
Talk about a time when you not only met a goal but exceeded expectations. How did you do it, what challenges did you face, and the results?
Talk about a time when your team was working towards a mission, or a goal that I did not think was achievable. What did you do, and what was the impact?

Dive Deep

Talk about a situation that required you to dig deep for a root cause. How did you know you were focusing on the right thing. What was the outcome, and is there anything you could have done differently?
Talk about a time when you were trying to understand a complex problem, and you had to dive into the details to figure it out, who did you talk with, and where did you have to look to find the most valuable information.
Walk me through any big problem or issue which you had to solve. What were your contributions, and what was the impact?

Earn Trust

Talk about a critical piece of feedback you have ever received. What was it, and What did you do about it? Describe when you needed to influence a college that had a different opinion about a shared goal. What did you do, and what was the outcome?
Talk about a time when you were not able to meet a commitment? What was the commitment, and what were the obstacles? what was the impact on customers and your teammates?
Give an example of when you uncovered a significant issue with your team or product. What was it, and how did you communicate? What did you do to address the problem?
Talk about a time when you improved morale or productivity within your team.
Example of time when a team member was struggling to keep up or fit in, and you decided to step in and help out. Why did you think that he was struggling? Why did you decide to step in and support, and how did it impact your work. What was the outcome?

Other:

Talk a little bit about yourself (The general ice-breaker)
Tell me about a time you had to disagree with your manager. How did you manage the situation? Would you have done anything differently?
Self-reflection is a key to becoming a great engineer. Can you reflect and discuss something you are weak and how you plan to work on it?

Amazon SDE 2 interview Experience

Jinesh Shah — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 18:14:53 +0000

I recently appeared for an Amazon SDE 2 interview, and this article will document my experience. The entire process took about three months, from the day the recruiter contacted me to the time I got the offer.

Amazon SDE-2 interview process has one telephonic screening and four on-site rounds. Making a total of five rounds. Sometimes, there are additional rounds conducted as a part of on-site interview. [Because of the global pandemic everything was conducted virtually.]

Telephonic Screening

[15 days after the first conversation with the recruiter]

This is an elimination round. The goal of this round was for the interviewer to determine if I should be allowed to appear in the on-site rounds. The duration was 45 mins, and I was expected to provide a complete solution to the given DS/Algorithm question.

Q: Search a word inside a given matrix, similar to Leetcode: word search

I quickly came up with a solution using a DFS traversal. I hadn't practised much before the telephonic round, so it took me a while to implement the solution. I finished it with about 10 mins to spare, and we did a couple of dry runs with the test cases. Once the interviewer was satisfied with the solution, we discussed time and space complexity and alternate solutions using other traversals like BFS.

Overall, the round went well, but I took a critical data point to speed up my coding by practising more before appearing in on-site rounds. So, I asked for the on-site to be scheduled after 20 days.

Onsite 1: DS and Algo Round

[21 days after Telephonic round]

I had practised a bit more and was ready to go. The duration of this round was expected to be 1 hour. The interviewer was expected to judge me on leadership principles and DSA. We started off with Leadership Principle related questions. I had good examples from my past experiences that demonstrated strong LP application. This took about 20 mins of the interview, and we proceeded to the DSA round.
Q1 : Gas station problem: Leetcode - Gas Station

I was able to implement this immediately and discussed the time complexity of my solution.

Q2 : Connect the nodes at the same level, similar to Leetcode - Populating Next Right Pointers in Each Node

We discussed the solution, but we ran out of time before thoroughly implementing the solution.

Overall, the round started off well, but somewhere along the way, I lost track of time and couldn't get everything done in time. (One reason was that I was expecting only one DSA question.)

I decided to ask the interviewer if there would be a follow-up question. The recruiter had similar feedback.

Onsite 2: DA and Algo Round

[Same day as Onsite 1]

The expectation for this round was the same as on-site 1. This round also started off DSA.

Q1 : Compute the size of the largest island in the given matrix where 0 represents sea and 1 represents land.

The interviewer confirmed there is a follow up after this. So I quickly implemented the solution using a modified DFS traversal and discussed time/space complexity. While implementing, I also explained the same to the interviewer, so he didn't need me to explain the solution again at the end.

Follow up : Now, you are allowed to change at max one sea cell to land cell what would be the size of the largest island formed in this case. similar to Leetcode - Make a large island

It wasn't very difficult, considering I already had half the solution implemented in Q1. I explained the DFS based solution, and the interviewer was happy. He asked if there were any other ways to solve the same problem. I proposed using Union Find to keep track of connected components and the size of the island and then compute the largest.

Note: DFS based solution was better in terms of time complexity, but the interviewer was interested in handling this with Union Find.

He asked me to implement the Union find based solution, and I was able to do it fairly quickly.
After this, the interviewer asked me LP-related questions, and I did well on them, just like in round 1.
We only had a minute or so to spare for my questions for the interviewer.

This round went pretty well, and my recruiter confirmed that this round had great feedback. The recruiter also told me that the upcoming rounds are design rounds, and I should take my time to prepare. My day job had a lot of design exposure, so I felt well prepped and asked the recruiter to schedule the interview soon.

Onsite 3: High-level design Round

[7 days after on-site 2]

The expected time for this round was 1 hour 10 mins, and the expectation of this round was to judge me on 2 LPs and my High level design skills.

LP discussion was a little longer in this round. It went very well as I had excellent examples to demonstrate the application of those principles. You can find my tips on how to Ace the LP interview questions.

HLD: Design a chat system for the Amazon returns team. Here a bot can respond to customers using a predefined workflow and if the customer reaches the end of the bot workflow, then allow an option to chat with a live Amazon returns agent. The customer can add photos and videos to the chat. Considering agents are working from home and an agent goes offline, new agents should see chat history immediately.

We used the invisionapp website for the design diagram, and I did well on this round. My tips for acing the HLD:
Have a structured approach and be open to suggestions. Something like:

Start with estimation.
Make assumptions and decide scope.
Come up with a very high-level design
Later, discuss individual components in more detail.

And some tips:

Make sure you are properly communicating your rationale behind every tech decision. Like why use web sockets over long polling? Or why do we choose No-SQL over SQL DB?
Make sure you discuss limitations and bottlenecks and a plan to avoid those if required.
Ask for frequent feedback explicitly and Ask if anything specific needs to be discussed before moving on to the next component. And many more, stay tuned for a blog around this.

Onsite 4: Bar-raiser and Low-level design round

[7 days after on-site 3]

The expected time for this round was 1 hour 10 mins, and the expectation of this round was to judge me on 2 LPs and my Low level design skills.

This round, the Discussion of LPs was much more detailed and longer, as mentioned before. I had prepped well with great examples, so it went very smooth. We spent about 35 mins just discussing my past experiences.

LLD: Design a snake and ladder software board game. I was asked to keep the design as extendible and modular as possible.

I made an extendible OOD design, and then we added more scenarios that the system could be extended to handle. For example, how will you handle a multi-player live-action shooting or a cricket game, how easily you can change the board configuration of snakes and ladders, etc.?

Make sure you use suitable design patterns to make your design adaptable and easy to extend. Some design patterns which I used are:

Strategy pattern
Observer pattern
Factory method
State design pattern

Onsite 5: Additional DS and Algo round

[7 days after on-site 4]

This additional round was conducted to test me a bit more on DSA. The expected time for this was 1 hour, and the interviewer was expected to ask 2 DSA questions. By this time, I had already cleared on-sites of multiple different companies, so I was pretty confident.

Q1:A simple DP similar to Leetcode: Climbing stairs

This was basically a Fibonacci type problem, and I solved this in just under 5 mins.

Q2: Find the order in which a compiler will build given files. If the two files are not dependent on each other, the order does not matter. Before compiling a file, all its dependent modules should be compiled.

Solved this using topological sort and discussed space and time complexity.
We still had about 20 mins to spare. So, we ended the call early. The round went very well.

[7 days after the interviews] The recruiter called to inform them they were planning to extend an offer. I didn't accept the offer in the end as I had already accepted an offer from another company.

One of the significant differences between interviewing at Amazon and other FAANG companies is their approach to the behavioural interview. Read more on how to Ace the Amazon Leadership Principle questions.

Feel free to read other posts related to interview prep and experience on jinesh.codes/interview

I recently publised the ultimate guide to land a Software Engineering job at Big Tech

Originally published at https://jinesh.codes on 19th Jan 2022.

DEV Community: Jinesh Shah

The ultimate guide to land a Software Engineering job at Big Tech

Target Audience

Motivation

Interview Process Overview

Weekly Schedule

Start Here

Your story

Levelling and compensation

A word on resume

Network and Linkedin

Tips for Recruiter conversation

The interviewer’s Perspective

Data structures, Algorithms and Problem solving Interview Preparation

Problem solving Interview Expectation

Data structure and Algorithm fundamentals

Coding practice

System Design Interview Preparation

System Design Interview Mindset

High Level Design

HLD interview framework

HLD knowledge expectation

Recommended learning

HLD Mock interview readiness Checkpoint

Low-Level Design

Resources:

LLD Mock interview readiness Checkpoint

Mock Interviews

General Interview tips

Behavioral and experience interview

Offer Stage

Negotiating the best offer

After you sign the Offer

Parting advice

Aggregated list of recommended resources

Ace the Amazon Leadership Principle interview questions

What are the Amazon leadership principles?

Here is a list of questions I had prepared for:

Customer Obsession:

Learn and be curious:

Deliver results

Dive Deep

Earn Trust

Other:

More resources to Prepare for Behavioural Questions and LP Questions:

Amazon SDE 2 interview Experience

Telephonic Screening

Onsite 1: DS and Algo Round

Onsite 2: DA and Algo Round

Onsite 3: High-level design Round

Onsite 4: Bar-raiser and Low-level design round

Onsite 5: Additional DS and Algo round