{"id":8079,"date":"2018-01-19T11:48:20","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T11:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/career-advice\/here-is-how-you-can-ace-these-amazon-technical-interview-questions-and-answers-8079\/"},"modified":"2023-03-24T17:02:05","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T11:32:05","slug":"here-is-how-you-can-ace-these-amazon-technical-interview-questions-and-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/here-is-how-you-can-ace-these-amazon-technical-interview-questions-and-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Here is how you can ace these Amazon technical interview questions and answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span><\/span><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>When it comes to tech, no one&rsquo;s doing it better than the world&rsquo;s top internet retailer by revenue: Amazon. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, a former hedge fund manager, Amazon is now &ndash; apart from being a retailer of household goods &ndash; an entertainment company, a publisher, the creator of a home assistant and a newly minted grocer.<\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>But first and foremost, it&rsquo;s a company that relies on technology. Be it Prime Air, which is designed to safely deliver packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using drones, or its latest patented technology, a drone that can carry a battery charge for electric cars and deliver them to cars out on the road that need them en route, Amazon&rsquo;s tech has put the behemoth on the road to the future. <\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>No wonder then that there has never been more interest in jobs at Amazon than there is today for top tech talent. With plenty of technical jobs available, there&rsquo;s opportunity to find a career that matches your skillset.<\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>But getting hired isn&rsquo;t easy. Like most top tech companies across the world, Amazon has a rigorous multi-tiered interview process to hire the &ldquo;best of the best&rdquo;. Why? In 2004, Bezos said in an interview: &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather interview 50 people and hire no one than hire the wrong person.&rdquo;<\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>Interview processes can vary depending on the role and position, but this is a general format that people applying for a technical role can expect: phone interviews, coding test, and in-person\/on-site interviews (including technical interviews). <\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>It&rsquo;s important to be up-to-speed with code, algorithms, data structures, code organisation, and simplicity, but there&rsquo;s more to the technical interview round. Here&rsquo;s everything you need to know about Amazon technical interview questions and answers: <\/span><\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span><strong>Make sure you can back up your claims<\/strong><\/span><\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>Neil Roseman, former Technology VP for Amazon and Zynga, has interviewed hundreds of people. He develops most of his questions to &ldquo;find out what somebody really did, as opposed to just being an observer or a participant.&rdquo; &ldquo;They might think it sounds good to say &lsquo;I improved system availability by 50%&rsquo;, but if we&rsquo;re hiring someone for a system engineering role, I need to know they actually did that. In most cases with high-level statements like this &mdash; which appear on resumes all the time &mdash; the person actually hasn&rsquo;t done it or was just a participant, and understands very little,&rdquo; he has said in an interview. Good candidates, he says, will be able to explain and backup their claims no matter how far you drill down.<\/span><\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span><strong>Brace up for a soft beginning&hellip;<\/strong><\/span><\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>Roseman begins by asking potential hires to introduce themselves and give him a couple of minutes about what they&rsquo;re &ldquo;interested in and most excited about.&rdquo; &ldquo;This ensures we&rsquo;re both comfortable,&rdquo; he says. He then gets started with the most hands-on technical questions. &ldquo;For an engineering position, the reason most people don&rsquo;t get hired is because they simply don&rsquo;t have the skills &mdash; they don&rsquo;t pass the technical bar,&rdquo; he says. Interviewers at Amazon typically pay attention to the candidate&rsquo;s area of focus. If it&rsquo;s coding, they may be asked a coding question based on their experience. But then be ready to have to dig down deep and answer detailed questions. <\/span><\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span><strong>Be ready to meet your bar-raiser<\/strong><\/span><\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>Amazon runs a program for &ldquo;bar-raisers&rdquo;, its top-performing employees, who apart from their job responsibilities, often conduct interviews for other teams each week. This, Amazonians believe, is one of the ways Bezos cuts risk on hiring the &ldquo;wrong&rdquo; people. Managers working to fill spots on their own team often make mistakes in hiring due to stress or desire to get the role filled as soon as possible. The bar-raiser, who belongs to a completely unrelated team, has no incentive\/stress\/desire to get the position filled as quickly as possible. They are interviewing to ensure only one thing &ndash; that Amazon hires only the brightest and the best.<\/span><\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span><strong>Focus on the questions, but don&rsquo;t forget to ask your own<\/strong><\/span><\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>Many interviewers end up asking candidates how they would solve the kinds of problems their company actually faces. &ldquo;While at Amazon, I often asked a design question that&rsquo;s based on the recommendation system &mdash; the &lsquo;people who bought also bought feature.&rsquo; It&rsquo;s always best if I cast this in terms of a product that people know. That way you see if they&rsquo;re both product focused and solution focused,&rdquo; Roseman says. He often also pressed candidates on product design, believing that great engineers &ldquo;should not simply be order takers, but actively part of product development.&rdquo; &ldquo;We want employees to ask questions. I want co-workers who ask questions and don&rsquo;t just sit in the corner and wait to be given orders,&rdquo; he says. <\/span><\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span><strong>Don&rsquo;t diss the soft skills<\/strong><\/span><\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>Jeanne Skinner, a leadership recruiter for Amazon, stresses on the importance of soft skills and culture fit. &ldquo;As a job seeker, we want you to show us recruiters why we should invest our own internal reputation capital on marketing you, your background and your capabilities to our leadership team,&rdquo; she says. It&rsquo;s important for you &ndash; and your body language &ndash; to show that you&rsquo;re a proactive, inspired person. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m looking for the people who embody the phrase &lsquo;fortune favours the prepared.&rsquo; It&rsquo;s the willingness to be ready and take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself,&rdquo; Roseman adds. <\/span><\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span><strong>We leave you with a long list of curated questions that have been asked at Amazon technical interviews:<\/strong><\/span><\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>1. You&rsquo;re given a Boolean 2D matrix; can you find the number of islands?<\/span><br><span>2. Given an array of strings, find if the given strings can be chained to form a circle. A string X can be put before another string Y in circle if the last character of X is same as first character of Y.<\/span><br><span>3. Tell us an efficient data structure for minimizing the following operations if we have an array arr[0 . . . n-1].<\/span><br><span>4. Add a value x to array from index l to r where 0 &lt;= l &lt;= r &lt;= n-1<\/span><br><span>5. Find the value of a specified element of the array arr[i] where 0 &lt;= i &lt;= n-1<\/span><br><span>6. Is   a palindrome? If you are given a random string, is it a palindrome or not?<\/span><br><span>7. Given a linked list, reverse K nodes in it.<\/span><br><span>8. Search for an element in an array which has elements who&rsquo;s values are first increasing and then decreasing. (Use modified binary search)<\/span><br><span>9. Find the second largest element in an array.<\/span><br><span>10. Given a sorted array which can have repeated elements, find the occurrence of an element. (Most optimal solution is O(log n) &ndash; Using binary search to find start and end occurrence)<\/span><br><span>11. Make a data structure and implement an algorithm to print all the files in a directory. (The root directory can have sub-directories too.)<\/span><br><span>12. Convert a BST into a DLL and DLL to BST in place.<\/span><br><span>13. Vertical traversal of a Binary Tree.<\/span><br><span>14. Lowest Common ancestor in a Binary Search Tree and Binary Tree.<\/span><br><span>15. Implement a stack with push(), pop() and min() in O(1) time.<\/span><br><span>16. In Facebook, find an efficient way to find the mutual friends between you and one of your given friends. Hint: hashing, dictionary data structure implementation<\/span><br><span>17. For two very long numbers given, find the product of these numbers in an efficient way. Hint: using binary multiplication effectively.<\/span><br><span>18. Given a number n, find the number just greater than n using same digits as that of n.<\/span><br><span>19. Convert Binary tree to linked list.<\/span><br><span>20. Rotate a matrix by 90 degrees.<\/span><br><span>21. What is the definition of tree?<\/span><br><span>22. What are the differences between graph and tree?<\/span><br><span>23. When can you say a graph to be a tree?<\/span><br><span>24. Write a program to show whether a graph is a tree or not using adjacency matrix.<\/span><br><span>25. Given two numbers represented by two linked lists, write a function that returns sum list.<\/span><br><span>26. What steps are taken when the OS shifts from one-thread execution to another?<\/span><br><span>27. What do you mean by constant time complexity?<\/span><br><span>28. What do you mean by hashing?<\/span><br><span>29. What is the function of DML Compiler?<\/span><br><span>30. State at least four kinds of indexing.<\/span><br><span>31. Discuss the UI problems of a previous project, how would you resolve them now?<\/span><br><span>32. Why is it easy to collaborate on a document in person but hard on the web?<\/span><br><span>33. How are requests handled in Resin (or a Java servlet container in general)?<\/span><br><span>34. How does dynamic recompilation work in Resin (or any other Java servlet container)?<\/span><br><span>35. Given a distributed system with many clients and many servers where the servers each export a different set of services and each have a different amount of computing power discuss the data structures used in a router to perform load balancing.<\/span><br><span>36. Write a function that given a list of items and weights return a random item in the list taking the weights into account.<\/span><br><span>37. Now write a O(log(n)) function<\/span><br><span>38. There is a big file of words which is dynamically changing. We are continuously adding some words into it. How would you keep track of top 10 trending words at each moment?<\/span><br><span>39. Write a function that returns the length of the longest leaf-to-leaf path in a binary tree.<\/span><br><span>40. Find an element in a sorted rotated integer array.<\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>Good to know: Each time you write a code, don&rsquo;t forget to check for the edge cases. Never make the mistake of assuming anything; there&rsquo;s never a no to questions, especially if there are any doubts. The following books may be helpful with your prep: <\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span>&bull; Cracking the Code Interviews<\/span><br><span>&bull; Programming Interviews Exposed<\/span><br><span>&bull; TopCoder <\/span><br><span>&bull; Algorithm in Nutshells <\/span><br><span>&bull; TopCoder <\/span><br><span>&bull; Introduction to Algorithms <\/span><br><span>&bull; Programming Pearl <\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span><em>This article has been compiled from various sources including company websites, corporate review sites, online discussion forums and knowledge sharing platforms.<\/em><\/span><\/p><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span><strong>More Resource<\/strong> : <a title=\"Job vacancies in jodhpur\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/search\/jobs-in-jodhpur\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Job vacancies in jodhpur<\/a> | <a title=\"Job vacancies in delhi\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/search\/jobs-in-delhi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Job vacancies in delhi<\/a> | <a title=\"Simple resignation letter\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/career-advice\/short-resignation-letter-8335.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Simple resignation letter<\/a> | <a title=\"Sales interview questions and answers for freshers\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monsterindia.com\/career-advice\/40-sales-interview-questions-and-answers-8347.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sales interview questions and answers for freshers<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When it comes to tech, no one&rsquo;s doing it better than the world&rsquo;s top internet retailer by revenue: Amazon. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, a former hedge fund manager, Amazon is now &ndash; apart from being a retailer of household goods &ndash; an entertainment company, a publisher, the creator of a home assistant and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/here-is-how-you-can-ace-these-amazon-technical-interview-questions-and-answers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Here is how you can ace these Amazon technical interview questions and answers<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview-questions"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8079"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33396,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions\/33396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.foundit.com.ph\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}