Cracked

Hey everyone! I’m beyond excited to share that I’ve accepted an offer to join Amazon as an SDE New Grad in San Francisco! It’s been a long journey with ups, downs, and a lot of learning and now that I’m on the other side, I really want to give back to this community that helped me so much. Ask me anything interview prep, timeline, rejection recovery, whatever’s on your mind. Here’s how my process went: * Got the OA on January 14th * Got an email saying I’d receive the interview scheduling survey by late February or March * That interview scheduling survey actually arrived in April (mid) * My interview loop was on first week of May * Got the offer and accepted 4 days later I had 3 interviews in the final loop: 1. Bar Raiser – Behavioral-heavy, with super deep follow-ups. We discussed a single past experience for over 30 minutes. Be ready to know your stories inside-out and always tie them back to customer obsession and ownership and ofcourse other amazons LPs. 2. LP + LLD – This one felt really good. It had 2 Leadership Principle questions followed by a straightforward low-level design question (one of those commonly seen ones). I was very comfortable here was able to code everything up and had a really good conversation. 3. Leetcode-style + LLD hybrid – The most interesting round. Initially, the interviewer mentioned we’d do 2 questions, but we ended up diving deep into a recommendation system design. It was extremely conversational: I’d code a part, then we’d pause to discuss it, talk optimizations, and iterate. Around the 50-minute mark, I asked if there’d be a second question they said nope, just this one with in-depth exploration. I even optimized my final solution down to O(1) access time. Loved this round. The interviewer was amazing like they were pushing me to the optimal solution just enough and were having a conversation did not felt like an interview. Now, fun fact: I failed Google back in December. Solved the problems, still got rejected. That experience taught me a lot, not just about coding but about what these companies really value. If anyone wants a post about that, I’m happy to write one. Prep Resources I Used ( total Leetcode 350 ish) : * Leetcode DSA Course * Blind 75 * Leetcode 150 * Amazon Top Interview Questions Total * Leadership article ( Really good ): <a href="https://www.scarletink.com/p/interviewing-at-amazon-leadership-principles)