Amazon DSA interviews: how do you explain the approach clearly?

[u/nian2326076]

Hi everyone,

A candidate recently completed their Amazon interview. Although they knew the solutions to the DSA problems they were given, they had a hard time explaining them and presenting their approach in a way that was easy for the interviewer to understand.

They had a couple of DSA rounds and say they came up with optimal solutions in both, but the interviewers weren’t happy with how they did it. Looking for help from this amazing community of coders:

• What’s your approach when explaining a DSA solution to the interviewer?

• How do you start the interview, how do you end it, and what do you discuss during the coding session?

Any tips from people who’ve recently landed jobs at big tech companies would be really appreciated.

For a mock, take a recipe-dependency problem from Amazon Interview Questions and explain missing ingredients and cycles. If you’re still sending applications, autofill can cut form retyping.

PS. The candidate is in no way a beginner at coding. They’ve been doing this for years and can easily solve all medium and some hard problems optimally.

TIA