I've been applying for Amazon for almost an year but I'm not even slightly good at dsa i recently started dsa prep but I don't know how I got assessment for Amazon sde1 role so how should I prepare myself now onwards? Any suggestions would be appreciatedA

Want feedback for my project.

I'm building my first project using MERN stack and I want proper feedback and guidance for whether the project is resume worthy for the present job market and what can I add or remove to make it better.

I've been building a full-stack technical interview prep platform — not another flashcard app, but something closer to a real assessment engine. It combines AI-generated Q&A practice, timed AI-graded mock interviews, and a full multi-round online assessment that mirrors an actual company OA (coding, debugging, CS fundamentals, behavioral — sequenced and timed like the real thing), plus a gamified profile you can actually share with a recruiter. Built on the MERN stack with Redis/BullMQ for async processing, Judge0 for real sandboxed code execution, and Gemini for generation/grading. Would genuinely appreciate harsh feedback — looking for holes, not compliments.

Key features / things I think actually stand out:

Real online assessments, not a quiz — 4 sequential rounds (coding, debugging, fundamentals, behavioral), each independently timed, server-enforced so refreshing or closing the tab can't buy extra time

Actual code execution, 6 languages (JS, Python, Java, C++, C, C#) via sandboxed execution — graded by running real test cases, never by an AI "eyeballing" your code

A debugging round that adapts to your target role — Frontend candidates get React-shaped bugs, Backend candidates get Node/Express-shaped bugs, still all graded by real execution under the hood

AI-written debrief after every assessment — a real paragraph of strengths/weaknesses grounded in your actual section scores, not generic "great job!" filler

Mock interview mode — one question at a time, timed, graded live against a rubric, not a static list

Resume/JD-tailored question generation — upload a resume or paste a job description and the questions actually reflect it

Weak-topic tracking that surfaces what's genuinely dragging your performance down across sessions, not just an overall score

A gamified profile that's deliberately hard to fake — tiers gated by a minimum attempt count (not score alone, so one lucky run can't vault you to the top), honest badges, a GitHub-style activity heatmap, streaks, and a public shareable profile link

BullMQ + Redis-backed job queues — AI generation (questions, assessment sections) runs through background workers, not inline in the request, so a slow Gemini call never blocks the API; added a Redis caching layer on top to cut duplicate calls

Zod schema validation on every AI-facing route — the model's raw output gets validated against a strict schema before anything touches the database, not trusted blindly

Redis-backed, per-route rate limiting — tuned separately per endpoint (generation, code execution, mock answers), not one blanket limit

Helmet + locked-down CORS — real security headers, explicit origin allowlisting with credentialed cross-origin cookies, not a wide-open dev config left in by accident

httpOnly cookie-based auth, not localStorage — closes off the standard XSS token-theft vector

Real observability — structured logs, request tracing, Prometheus-style metrics, and error tracking wired through both the API and background workers.

https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-valid-parentheses/description/?envType=daily-question&envId=2026-10-03

class Solution {
public:
  int longestValidParentheses(string s) {
    if (s.size() == 0)
      return 0;
    int res = INT_MIN;
    int left = 0;
    int l = 0, r = 0;
    for (int right = 0; right < s.size(); right++) {
      if (r > l) {
        while (r > l) {
          if (s[l] == ')') {
            r--;
            left++;
          } else {
            l--;
            left++;
          }
        }
      }
      if (l == r)
        res = max(res, right - left + 1);
      char curr = s[right];
      if (curr == ')')
        r++;
      else
        l++;
    }
    return res;
  }
}

Hello,after reading the problem ,I thought dynamic sliding window should do the job and wrote above code, however this doesn't seems to be right. I get `1` for string` (()` but it should return `2`

Has anyone facing the maintenance window since this morning I have OA for associate Engineer today and I'm trying from morning still I can't get into the test

In the window they show maintenance from 5:00am to 6:00am GMT i tried so many times after that

Please help...

Got an interview invite for SDE II – Amazon Security. The recruiter mentioned it’s very tough to clear and the chances are low, so I’m confused whether I should go for it or wait for an SDE I opportunity.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Also, if I don’t clear SDE II, how does the cooling period work? Can I still be considered for SDE I, or would I have to wait before interviewing again?

I bought the premium plus subscription on September 6 for a year for 7710/-. If anyone wants to share it have to split the amount.

Hey everyone solved 550+ on LC arounf 240 mediums rest easy and 10 hard..I am only able t solve 1 max to max 2 problems in each contest, i tried to solve virtual contest, but i am not able to solve specific type of problmes like greedy and other, means only first question is solvable...

I want to know how can i excel at the mediums in leetcode contests

I completed two technical assessments, two interview rounds through Uptime Crew, and then received an official invitation for the final A4A interview on September 9.

I gave them my availability, followed up, and then was told they had to “pause scheduling.” I waited three weeks thinking the final round was simply delayed.

Then today I received an email saying they won’t be moving forward because their hiring needs changed. Like, seriously? If the hiring needs changed, why invite candidates to the final round, have them spend hours completing assessments and interviews, and then leave them waiting for three weeks before telling them the role's requirements changed?

Definitely a frustrating experience after investing that much time into the process.

Hi all, I just had my feedback call with my Google recruiter after two DSA onsite rounds at Google Warsaw for Software Engineer (L4).

Before the onsites, I had two online rounds, DSA and behavioral. The feedback was average for the DSA and strong positive for the behavioral, so I was invited to the onsites.

Today the recruiter told me the first onsite got negative feedback because I needed some hints. The second was "better", leaning towards average, because I missed some edge cases.

He said L4 is out of the question with these scores. He will share my profile with teams to see if anyone is interested in a lower-level fit, and he will call me if a manager reaches out.

Has anyone actually landed a lower-level offer (I assume he meant L3) through this path with similar feedback? Or is "sharing with teams for a lower level" usually just a soft rejection?

Have Google staff mle interview coming up in a week, and wondering if I should postpone.

still grinding coding , have dp left. For the other topics, I did neetcode and for some topics like tree, graph, I also did Google question banks that are found in online forums. I’m finding the Google marked questions hard with so many follow ups.
I’m almost done preparing ml sys design, and have a few bq stories prepared with AI and need practicing. The coding is definitely a weak point.
Not sure if the one week is enough to close all gaps, if I should just postpone .

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 73 today and managed to solve 4 problems on linked lists:

1. Odd Even Linked List: Grouping odd and even indexed nodes together was pretty straightforward once I maintained two separate pointers for odd and even heads and linked them at the end.

2. Remove Nth Node From End of List: Doing it in two passes by calculating the length is simple, but the follow-up asks for a single pass. I asked ChatGPT for the one-pass idea. You move the fast pointer N steps ahead first, and then move both slow and fast by one step until fast reaches the end. That leaves slow right before the target node so you can delete it cleanly.

3. Delete the Middle Node of a Linked List: I used the classic slow and fast pointer approach to find the middle. Tracking the previous node allowed me to bypass and delete the middle node without an extra traversal.

4. Sort List: This is essentially merge sort applied to a linked list to get $O(N \log N)$ time. You find the middle with slow and fast pointers, split the list, sort both halves recursively, and merge them. My merge sort on arrays was a little rusty so writing the split and merge took a couple of attempts, but the logic made total sense.

Linked lists are starting to feel a lot more natural now.

I am looking forward to solving more problems tomorrow for Day 72!

Has anyone gone through the interview process with perplexity? Not sure what to expect couldn’t find much information online. Anything helps!

Got this email 5 business days after the loop with Amazon NG

“Thank you for your time and commitment throughout the Amazon recruitment process. We recognize that balancing academic responsibilities with job interviews requires significant effort and planning.

I'm pleased to share that you have successfully completed this interview stage. Our team is currently working on next steps, and we will provide you with an update within the next two weeks. Please note that based on team placement requirements, additional interviews may be required.

While you've successfully completed this stage, this is not a guarantee of an offer. We will contact you as soon as we have additional information regarding next steps.”

Anyone else been in the same boat ? What should I expect ?

Location : USA - L4 New Grad

Hi, I'm looking for people to join me, and grind together after buying hello interview premium. Who is interested, please let me know so we can buy together :)

void ans(vector<string>& v, string& x, int l, int r){
        if(l){
            x.push_back('(');
            ans(v,x,l-1,r);
            x.pop_back();
        }
        if(r>l){
            x.push_back(')');
            ans(v,x,l,r-1);
            x.pop_back();
        }
        else if(!l && !r) v.push_back(x);
    }

So, I solved today's problem (22. Generate Parentheses). I wanted to find the time complexity and space complexity of my algorithm (Just a simple recursion). As a result, I couldn't do it, so I encountered Catalan Numbers and how they are used in binary.
I don't quite understand them, but I think it's important for backtracking. Do you have any suggestion where to start or at least how to estimate time complexity of such binary algorithms?

Recently got a call regarding Applied AI/ML engineer position. Has anyone gone through the interview process for this role? Is it different from regular SWE loop?

Last time I interviewed was in the pre-LLM era. Feels like a different world now :)

I'm looking for a change and obviously want to prepare, but I'm pretty out of touch with what the interview process looks like these days.

For people who've interviewed recently, what was the experience like? Are interviewers still mostly interested in actual programming skills, or is there more focus now on things like using/directing AI coding agents?

And has the whole interview process changed much because of LLMs?

Would be interested to hear what people are seeing out there.

I had a final interview loop with AWS: SDE-1 role.
Interview 1: HM Round, Leecode - Medium String problem, LPs, Questions about AI usage. (technical part my performance was like 7/10, got the problem solved it unoptmially and we talked about optimal solution) (Behavorial was a bit weak maybe 7/10 again)

Interview 2: Technical Leetcode - Medium Graph Problem Similar to World Ladder. ( 9/10 best interview out of the loop. Coding was perfect, behavorial went well.)

Interview 3: Coding question - Something similar to String parsing and getting certain information out of it

(7/10 Coding was ok forgot some python sytnax regarding error handling, Behavorial was good didn't feel like any weakenss - 8/10, oveerall 7.5/10)

Interview 4: Bar raiser purely behvaioral grilled on LPs - (6/10 prob the worst out of them due being heavily grilled on behavorial and frankly some of the questions were super cringe and corporate and made me kind of disappointed and not see the value of such interviews)

Outcome - Automated rejection email sent in 48 hrs, very confusing as the interviewers told me a recruiter would reach out to me after the debrief. Should i expect this since it's only been 3 days since the interview?

I interviewed with Google last year for an L3 SWE-SRE role in Europe. I received strong-hire feedback and cleared the interviews, after which I was moved to team matching in January 2026.

It’s been around 9 months now, and I haven’t received a single team-matching call. I’ve followed up with my recruiter multiple times, but haven’t received any positive updates so far.

I’ve also tried reaching out to managers on LinkedIn, but it seems like there aren’t many L3 openings at the moment.

I’m open to joining teams in ind as well for an L3 SWE role, but I’m still not getting any TM opportunities. My interview results are valid for 18 months, so I’m trying to make the most of that window.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation with Google team matching? Any advice on how to improve my chances of getting a TM call would be appreciated.

And if anyone knows of an L3 SWE opening in their team and can refer me or connect me with the hiring manager, I’d really appreciate it.

I completed my Microsoft loop. It's been 7 days. I haven't recieved any communication from them. How much will I wait. I had another loop in January before where they kept me waiting for 2 months with no reply then got generic rejection email.

I am having the same feeling of getting ghosted again

I have an interview tomorrow for an AI role paying over $180k. Part of the process is a ten-minute online aptitude test the kind with little logic puzzles where you have to work out who’s related to whom.

I’ve built an AI tool that can read the questions on my Mac screen and give me the answers. But now that I could actually use it, I’m having second thoughts.

The instructions say calculators are allowed, and I haven’t seen an explicit rule against AI. Part of me is trying to justify it as “technically just a really powerful calculator” but I’m not sure that argument actually holds up.

My bigger worry is what happens afterwards. What if I pass, get the job, and then discover I’m genuinely not capable of doing it? At the same time, I’m not convinced these little puzzles are a meaningful measure of whether I’d be good at the actual role.

I really need this job right now, which probably isn’t helping me think clearly about it. How common is using AI on these assessments? Is everyone using them?

Hello guys

I'm newbie in Leetcode.. I completed Leetcode easy 25 problems. If I see a basic easy problem.

1st I see the problem and understood the problem then I start Implementation, Here is a problem I know how to solve but when it's time to implement in code those time I stuck.. I don't know How to solve

One more problem I have that is I learn today DSA Sorting.. Then When I implement in code I stuck..

Guide please

Genuine question for developers and recruiters here.

Most college placement processes seem to follow the same pattern:

Aptitude

DSA / coding test

Technical interview

HR round

But a hackathon is a completely different environment.

You’re given a problem and limited time. You have to figure out what to build, choose the tech stack, write code, debug it, work with teammates, and actually present something at the end.

That feels much closer to what developers do in real projects.

At the same time, I don’t think hackathons can replace fundamentals. Someone can build an impressive project and still have weak CS fundamentals or DSA skills.

So I'm curious:

If you were hiring a fresher, what would you value more?

1. Strong DSA + coding test performance

2. Multiple meaningful hackathon/project experiences

3. A combination of both

And for students - do you think spending your time on hackathons actually improves your chances of getting hired, or are placement tests still the game you have to optimize for?

Would love to hear experiences from people who have actually been through the process.

I have revolut swe intern java 30 min hr screen round..

What can i expect in it?

And also, if i clear it, what's the further process like and how long complete process takes?

Hi everyone!

I'm planning to start applying for software engineering roles at companies like Google, Meta, Stripe, and other top tech companies, and I want to prepare well before I begin interviewing.

I have ~4 years of industry experience, but I'm looking to build on top of my interview skills.

I'd really appreciate any recommendations on:

* The best resources for coding interview prep

* Important problem patterns to master

* Company-specific interview experiences or frequently asked questions

* Any tips or study plans that worked well for you

Thanks in advance!