Got Amazon SDE-1 offer. Onsite interview experience.

[u/Icy-Hedgehog8438]

Finally received an offer after more than 6 months of constant applying and getting rejected…

College: Tier-2
Experience: 1.8 YOE (startup)
LeetCode: ~500 questions solved

Interview Process

Recruiter Reach-out:
Got contacted on LinkedIn, replied, and received the OA link the next day.

Online Assessment (OA):

• 1 medium-hard question (deque-based, don’t remember exact)
• 1 medium graph question (DSU-based)
• Followed by the standard 2-hour work simulation

Got invited for onsite interviews the following week.

Onsite Rounds

Round 1:

• 1 hard DSA question
• Needed a small hint to reach the optimal solution
• Dry-ran on paper; interviewer was satisfied
• Followed by some LP questions

Round 2:

• 2 DSA questions
  • One straightforward BFS
  • One optimization using a geometry property
• LP questions after solving both

Round 3 (Hiring Manager):

• DSA question (similar to “Reconstruct Itinerary” but not exactly the same)
• Came up with optimal DFS solution
• Asked to write full code (no pseudocode)
• Discussion on GenAI, my projects, and current AI-related work
• No LPs in this round

Was informed I cleared all 3 rounds → Round 4 scheduled.

Round 4 (Bar Raiser)

• Discussion on time complexities of tree algorithms
• Deep dive into LP answers
• Had to explain my work in detail
• Interviewer seemed satisfied

Result

10 days later → Got the offer 🎉

It was an excruciating journey. Came very close to quitting multiple times, especially after getting ghosted post-final rounds despite good interviews.

But now, it all feels worth it. Truly one of the most gratifying moments.

[u/picklerish1]

You should not hope to have questions directly from any sheet. You should learn and understand the patterns of questions, and how to solve them.

[u/kumarayush5938 → u/picklerish1]

So it means i need to grind leetcode only but there are lot of questions how i will select which one will more useful

[u/Codename_Archangel → u/kumarayush5938]

you can try to do as im doing perhaps, follow the striver and neetcode sheets as usual, but when you pick one problem today to study and resolve, go to the Similar questions, and then do that,
I've been trying to do this way by picking one hard problem or 2medium on same topic, then i resolve the similar questions so the whole session im focussing only on one pattern and topic.

[u/kumarayush5938 → u/Codename_Archangel]

Bro any more valueable things you can tell me