{"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.monster.co.th\/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":"\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">When it comes to tech, no one\u2019s doing it better than the world\u2019s top internet retailer by revenue: Amazon. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, a former hedge fund manager, Amazon is now \u2013 apart from being a retailer of household goods &#8211; an entertainment company, a publisher, the creator of a home assistant and a newly minted grocer.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">But first and foremost, it\u2019s 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\u2019s tech has put the behemoth on the road to the future. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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\u2019s opportunity to find a career that matches your skillset.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">But getting hired isn\u2019t easy. Like most top tech companies across the world, Amazon has a rigorous multi-tiered interview process to hire the \u201cbest of the best\u201d. Why? In 2004, Bezos said in an interview: \u201cI\u2019d rather interview 50 people and hire no one than hire the wrong person.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">It\u2019s important to be up-to-speed with code, algorithms, data structures, code organisation, and simplicity, but there\u2019s more to the technical interview round. Here\u2019s everything you need to know about Amazon technical interview questions and answers: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong>Make sure you can back up your claims<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Neil Roseman, former Technology VP for Amazon and Zynga, has interviewed hundreds of people. He develops most of his questions to \u201cfind out what somebody really did, as opposed to just being an observer or a participant.\u201d \u201cThey might think it sounds good to say &#8216;I improved system availability by 50%\u2019, but if we\u2019re hiring someone for a system engineering role, I need to know they actually did that. In most cases with high-level statements like this \u2014 which appear on resumes all the time \u2014 the person actually hasn\u2019t done it or was just a participant, and understands very little,\u201d 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>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong>Brace up for a soft beginning\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Roseman begins by asking potential hires to introduce themselves and give him a couple of minutes about what they\u2019re \u201cinterested in and most excited about.\u201d \u201cThis ensures we\u2019re both comfortable,\u201d he says. He then gets started with the most hands-on technical questions. \u201cFor an engineering position, the reason most people don\u2019t get hired is because they simply don\u2019t have the skills \u2014 they don\u2019t pass the technical bar,\u201d he says. Interviewers at Amazon typically pay attention to the candidate\u2019s area of focus. If it\u2019s 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>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong>Be ready to meet your bar-raiser<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Amazon runs a program for \u201cbar-raisers\u201d, 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 \u201cwrong\u201d 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 \u2013 that Amazon hires only the brightest and the best.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong>Focus on the questions, but don\u2019t forget to ask your own<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Many interviewers end up asking candidates how they would solve the kinds of problems their company actually faces. \u201cWhile at Amazon, I often asked a design question that\u2019s based on the recommendation system \u2014 the \u2018people who bought also bought feature.\u2019 It\u2019s always best if I cast this in terms of a product that people know. That way you see if they\u2019re both product focused and solution focused,\u201d Roseman says. He often also pressed candidates on product design, believing that great engineers \u201cshould not simply be order takers, but actively part of product development.\u201d \u201cWe want employees to ask questions. I want co-workers who ask questions and don\u2019t just sit in the corner and wait to be given orders,\u201d he says. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong>Don\u2019t diss the soft skills<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Jeanne Skinner, a leadership recruiter for Amazon, stresses on the importance of soft skills and culture fit. \u201cAs 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,\u201d she says. It\u2019s important for you \u2013 and your body language \u2013 to show that you\u2019re a proactive, inspired person. \u201cI\u2019m looking for the people who embody the phrase \u2018fortune favours the prepared.\u2019 It\u2019s the willingness to be ready and take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself,\u201d Roseman adds. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><strong>We leave you with a long list of curated questions that have been asked at Amazon technical interviews:<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">1. You\u2019re given a Boolean 2D matrix; can you find the number of islands?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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 style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">3. Tell us an efficient data structure for minimizing the following operations if we have an array arr[0 . . . n-1].<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">4. Add a value x to array from index l to r where 0 &lt;= l &lt;= r &lt;= n-1<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">5. Find the value of a specified element of the array arr[i] where 0 &lt;= i &lt;= n-1<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">6. Is   a palindrome? If you are given a random string, is it a palindrome or not?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">7. Given a linked list, reverse K nodes in it.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">8. Search for an element in an array which has elements who\u2019s values are first increasing and then decreasing. (Use modified binary search)<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">9. Find the second largest element in an array.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">10. Given a sorted array which can have repeated elements, find the occurrence of an element. (Most optimal solution is O(log n) \u2013 Using binary search to find start and end occurrence)<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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 style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">12. Convert a BST into a DLL and DLL to BST in place.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">13. Vertical traversal of a Binary Tree.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">14. Lowest Common ancestor in a Binary Search Tree and Binary Tree.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">15. Implement a stack with push(), pop() and min() in O(1) time.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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 style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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 style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">18. Given a number n, find the number just greater than n using same digits as that of n.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">19. Convert Binary tree to linked list.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">20. Rotate a matrix by 90 degrees.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">21. What is the definition of tree?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">22. What are the differences between graph and tree?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">23. When can you say a graph to be a tree?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">24. Write a program to show whether a graph is a tree or not using adjacency matrix.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">25. Given two numbers represented by two linked lists, write a function that returns sum list.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">26. What steps are taken when the OS shifts from one-thread execution to another?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">27. What do you mean by constant time complexity?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">28. What do you mean by hashing?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">29. What is the function of DML Compiler?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">30. State at least four kinds of indexing.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">31. Discuss the UI problems of a previous project, how would you resolve them now?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">32. Why is it easy to collaborate on a document in person but hard on the web?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">33. How are requests handled in Resin (or a Java servlet container in general)?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">34. How does dynamic recompilation work in Resin (or any other Java servlet container)?<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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 style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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 style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">37. Now write a O(log(n)) function<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">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 style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">39. Write a function that returns the length of the longest leaf-to-leaf path in a binary tree.<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">40. Find an element in a sorted rotated integer array.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">Good to know: Each time you write a code, don\u2019t forget to check for the edge cases. Never make the mistake of assuming anything; there\u2019s never a no to questions, especially if there are any doubts. The following books may be helpful with your prep: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\u2022 Cracking the Code Interviews<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\u2022 Programming Interviews Exposed<\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\u2022 TopCoder <\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\u2022 Algorithm in Nutshells <\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\u2022 TopCoder <\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\u2022 Introduction to Algorithms <\/span><br><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\">\u2022 Programming Pearl <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;\"><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>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><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\/\" 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\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sales interview questions and answers for freshers<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When it comes to tech, no one\u2019s doing it better than the world\u2019s top internet retailer by revenue: Amazon. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, a former hedge fund manager, Amazon is now \u2013 apart from being a retailer of household goods &#8211; an entertainment company, a publisher, the creator of a home assistant and [&hellip;]<\/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":{"0":"post-8079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interview-questions"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8079"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33396,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions\/33396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster.co.th\/career-advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}