The hiring and interview process started for me when a recruiter reached out to me about openings for SDE2 positions. I only had 1 year of experience, so I was a bit hesitant, but I decided to give the online assessment a try after some preparation. The online assessment on HackerRank included two coding questions and a behavioral evaluation. The coding questions were the standard LeetCode, HackerRank, etc. type questions that you can expect from a big tech company with Amazon-like hiring practices. You also had to explain your approach. My assessment went to manual review because the second answer had a small bug that caused one test case not to pass, but I still passed. After the online assessment, there was a virtual onsite interview. This was an interview loop with several people in four sessions. There were algorithms and data structures questions, general problem-solving questions, and questions based on the leadership principles. The interviewing process was pretty enjoyable. I had the good fortune of having interviewers who were friendly and supportive, allowed me to get my ideas across, and answered any questions that I had thoughtfully without being dismissive. Some were not as open and friendly as others, but perhaps this was part of the process? Either way, I definitely got the sense that the people who interviewed me were the types of people that I would want to work with and that they were respectful of my time and ambitions. I walked away feeling pretty good, but not 100% sure. I tried to stay optimistic during the process. I didn't quite have the experience of an SDE2, but I thought my knowledge of CS fundamentals and leadership principles (ownership, curiosity, openness to learning, etc.) would show. In the end, the feedback that I received was that my knowledge and skills were determined to be a good fit for Amazon, but that I lacked the experience required for an SDE2. I thought this was a fair assessment, being that an SDE1 position would have probably been better for me. So I was given an SDE1 offer, which I gladly accepted. I have been blessed to have a great interview process. When I got to Amazon, I learned that Amazon focuses on making interviewing a great experience for everyone, where people can walk away still feeling good about Amazon as a company and future opportunities whether or not they receive an offer, and I think they are meeting this goal well. I hope Amazon can continue to make efforts (and they still have a long way to go in some regards) in hiring a diverse workforce with an equitable hiring process.

Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.