So, I met an Amazon recruiter at a software engineering conference for undergraduate students. After a brief chat, she sent me to speak with one of the two engineers at the Amazon booth. This engineer asked me a data structures related programming question. Naturally, this question had a simple naive solution as well as an optimized solution. I coded up a quick solution both ways and explained them. Approximately 3 weeks later, I was contacted and Amazon flew me out to Seattle for an interview at their headquarters (no phone interview). At their headquarters, there was a 6 hour long coding intensive interview conducted in small groups, with a 1 on 1 interview to close out the day. Two days after, I was extended an offer, which I accepted. All in all, a very pleasant experience.

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.