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Amazon | SDE2 ( L5 ) | India | Feb 2024 (Rejected)

Online Assessment

Questions:

  1. Simple medium question based on sets.
  2. Medium question solvable only using Trie.

Time Taken: Solved both questions in 40 mins.

Sections:


Round 1: Technical (LLD)

Questions:

  1. Two Amazon Leadership Principles (LP) questions.
  2. Design Email Domain Server (LLD):
    • Task: Design a system for domain name registration and email creation, including sending emails between users of the same and different domains.

Learnings:

Candidate's Approach
  • Followed STAR approach for LP questions but struggled to satisfy the interviewer.
  • Initially misunderstood the design question; needed clarification.
  • Partially solved the design problem with hints from the interviewer.
  • Expected to provide a high-level design with database selections and component details.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • The interviewer was supportive but emphasized the need for deeper understanding and preparation.
  • Suggested that the candidate should practice more independently and discuss choices during the interview.

Round 2: Technical (DSA)

Questions:

  1. Given two nodes of a binary tree, find the distance between them.
    • Tree structure:
    TreeNode{ int val; TreeNode parent; }
    • Example:
    1 / \ 5 3 / \ \ 4 8 7
    • Examples:
      • distance(5, 7) output: 3
      • distance(8, 7) output: 4
      • distance(4, 8) output: 2

Time Taken: 35 mins for the tree question, followed by 20 mins for Amazon LP questions.

Candidate's Approach
  • First Approach: Used a hashmap to store distances from node1 to root and checked for node2 in the map.
  • Second Approach:
    • Added nodes from node1 to root into a set.
    • Iterated from node2 to find the lowest common ancestor (LCA) using the set.
    • Calculated distances from both nodes to the LCA.
  • Time & space complexity: O(h), where h is the height of the tree.
Interviewer's Feedback
  • The interviewer seemed to have additional questions but time constraints limited the discussion.
  • The candidate successfully explained edge cases after the main question.