How I Passed Amazon's SDE Internship Interviews (Software Engineering)
325 segments
five months from start to offer two
different job portals four part oop
design problem two interviewers
hey how's it going phyllis here to be
honest if you wanna learn about amazon
internships all you have to do is to go
to the cs major subreddit and read for
two hours i'm sure you will learn more
than what any random youtube video can
tell you i interned at aws in fall 2021
and there were a lot of things i wish i
knew before i got started so in this
video i'm gonna try to tell you
everything i know now so that you can
have a better internship experience so
first let's talk about the application
process
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the first thing you have to know is that
when you apply actually matters i
applied to the sd internship in october
and only got a response back in january
the interview process itself took
another two months so in total it took
me about five months from start to offer
that is a lot of time right if you apply
too late you might not even be able to
get an offer because of limited
headcounts so my advice is that you
apply as soon as possible amazon sd
internships usually get posted around
august of every year so if you can't
just apply right away if you want a firm
deadline to prepare i would say apply by
the end of september most of my friends
did that and they got their offers
pretty early now another question is
where you apply
and this is very simple just apply
online don't worry about any in-person
events amazon is a huge company that
recruits in a lot of universities and
they would go to a lot of career fairs
however if you have talked to amazon at
any career fair you will know that they
will tell you to apply online this is my
exact experience at cmu for two years so
if amazon tells all the cmu students to
apply online they will probably tell you
to as well so you might just want to
apply online and save some time at the
career fairs now that you know when and
where to apply you might go to the
online website to start looking for jobs
there are generally three types of
engineering internships you can apply to
the first one and the one that everybody
applies to is a normal sde internship at
amazon software engineers are called
software development engineers that is
exactly the same thing there's no
difference one thing to know is that
other subsidiaries of amazon such as
twitch and audible have their own
recruiting websites so if you want to
work for those companies specifically
you should apply on their separate
websites and their recruiting process
might be a little different so you
should be mindful of that the second
program which is relatively new is
what's called app the amazon propel
program it works the same way as the sd
internship but only for underclassmen
think of it as the amazon version of fbu
or google step so if you're a freshman
or sophomore i would say just apply to
both and see which one you can get i've
heard that when some underclassmen apply
to the normal sd internship they
actually got placed to the app program
which is fine there's not much
difference the third type of program is
other technical internships for example
sometimes a random data engineering
internship might get posted and you can
just apply to that there's no conflict
to how many jobs you apply to but when
you apply to any of those jobs make sure
you look out for the specific region or
even the specific country that the job
is posted in amazon hires interns
globally so i would recommend that you
apply to internships that you where you
want to work so just do a double take of
job location when you apply to the
internship now you have chosen the
internship you want to apply to the next
thing to do is to actually apply
the application process is quite simple
you just have to sign up and follow the
process one thing that's kind of
confusing is that for students amazon
actually has two different job portals
amazon university.jobs is not the same
as amazon.jobs for students the most
important one is amazonuniversity.jobs
that is where you will store all your
information and get all the updates from
amazon so make sure you don't forget
about your password and have to reset
every time don't ask me why i know it's
just based on the real story another
thing is that once you have signed up
for your jobs account make sure you keep
your resume updated i think that you
interviewers will pull your resume from
those job portals so if you have account
from previous years make sure you
re-upload your resume your application
dashboard should be your point of
contact from now on it will show your
job application status and you don't
have to check every 10 minutes i know
i've been there it was pretty anxious to
wait for the next update if your job
status changes don't panic go check the
cs majors subreddit i guarantee you
someone has already made the post about
the exact same thing also the dashboard
is where you will accept or decline your
offer and see how much time you have to
make that decision so make sure you keep
it safe and check it from time to time
as well now you have already applied to
the internship the only thing you can do
is to wait until your resume gets picked
up the weight might be frustrating but
that's the only thing you can do there
is nothing you can do to speed up the
weight so just keep practicing in the
meanwhile if you are lucky enough in a
few months your application will
actually get picked up and now you start
the interview process
for amazon sd internships there are two
main components to the interview process
the first part is the online assessments
and the second part is the actual
interview the online assessments or the
oas are different every year but they
generally follow the same format so if
you want to get the most up-to-date
information you should check out the cs
major subreddit it is very easy to see
what amazon's interview process is like
every year because a lot of people share
their amazon interview experience every
year but generally they always go like
this one is usually debugging you'll be
given some problems in a web-based
editor and you will have to just debug
the code my only advice for this part is
that you should learn java or c
beforehand and also c plus plus because
when i took it those are the only
languages that were available oe2 is
your usual legal problem it's usually
pretty easy if you practice and
sometimes you might even get the same
problems that your friends had i guess
amazon just doesn't really have a big
problem database oe3 is what's called
work simulation basically you're given
real life work scenarios and you have to
choose what works best for that
situation it's mostly just multiple
choices and filled in the blank and it's
not really that challenging to do so as
long as you pay attention to the
problems you should be fine allegedly
os3 is way more among all the oas so
just pay some attention to it my advice
is that make sure you stay to a
consistent work style whether to
optimize the deadline or code quality
that's up to you but make sure you have
some kind of strategy when you look at
the problems and just generally know how
to work with people if you pass the 308s
you will be invited to the actual
interview for sd internships you have
one 45 minute interview and for new grad
positions you might have one 45 minute
or three 45 minute interviews depending
on your performance on the previous oas
how is that determined i have no idea
it's probably just totally random one
thing i want to mention is that before
the interview you should check out how
to use chime chime is basically just
like zoom but for amazon the app itself
is kind of janky and hard to use i
actually had my chime app not working
five minutes before the interview and i
had to troubleshoot and log in the web
version by which time i already lost
five minutes you might not think that's
a big deal but losing 5 minutes in a 45
minute tight interview is kind of
problematic so make sure you don't make
mistakes like i did the interview will
be split into two portions one of the
portions will be technical which is
basically your lead code problems there
are a lot of ways to prepare for the
technical problems what i recommend to
do is to just do the lead code using
lead code to prepare will be enough when
i asked all my friends who got into
amazon most of them got pretty typical
graph problems like dfs and bfs so make
sure you brush up on graph problems but
in reality what kind of problem you get
is totally random you might get very
unlucky like me i got a four part oop
design problem which i barely finished
and it was kind of a miracle that i even
passed the interview but i guess i just
got really lucky i think for the actual
interview you can use any language you
want i remember my interviewer gave me
the prompt in java and i just did the
whole thing in python and they were okay
with it the other part of the actual
interview will be the behavioral portion
which is actually quite easy to prepare
amazon wants you to know what's called
the lps the leadership principles the
rp's are a list of principles that
amazon employees are expected to
exercise so my advice is that you
prepare a story for each of the lps and
you should be fine my experience is that
your interviewer will specifically look
for parts of your story that kind of fit
the lp that they're looking for so make
sure you give them the kind of story
that they're looking for and you should
be fine funny thing i actually had two
interviewers one of them is shadowing so
that was a little bit more
nerve-wracking than i thought so if you
see two interviewers don't panic you
will be fine one of them might just be
shadowing and you will not get double
the amount of problems but again what
kind of problems you are getting is
absolutely random there's no one who can
tell you what problems you will get from
the actual interview so don't get too
upset if you get a really hard problem
you could still get the offer even if
you don't get the most optimal solution
so that's really all for the interview
process once you finish the interview
there's nothing else you can do but wait
you might be like me and just got really
anxious and just want to check it every
single day and i would say just don't
give yourself some time take a break and
just wait for the email at this point
there's nothing you can do to make your
application better so just take a break
within a few weeks you'll probably get a
response and if you're lucky enough you
will get the offer and that is when you
can start thinking about how you want to
deal with the internship the amazon sd
internship is kind the same as every
other sd internship there isn't that
much difference so i won't talk
specifically about my experience but
there's still a few things you should
think about before you accept the offer
the first thing is that you will not
know what team you will be on for the
internship your team selection is
totally random depending on your skill
set you will not know your team until a
few weeks or even a few months before so
there's no point to be too anxious about
it if you really want to get ahead i
would say learn more java because java
is the most used language at amazon
another thing you can do to start early
is to connect with your manager as soon
as possible that way you can get a feel
of what kind of team you will be on and
what kind of project you will be doing
once you accept the offer the rest is
pretty easy to figure out you can send
questions to the official amazon
recruiting email and there will be a lot
of documentation to get you started once
you accept the offer so i won't get too
much into that one last thing i want to
mention is about taxes if you are doing
the sd internship in the us you are
definitely going to file taxes so make
sure you keep a record of your w2 as
well as your relocation bonus all of
those will be needed when you file taxes
next year with that said the interview
process is actually pretty
straightforward and there's a lot of
information online to get you started
editing field here i realized that this
video is getting too long so i am making
a part 2 of it if you want to watch part
2 go click the link somewhere on the
screen right now and don't forget to
leave a like and subscribe and i'll see
you in part two bye
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This video provides a comprehensive guide for students interested in applying for software development engineering internships at Amazon. The creator details the timeline for applications, the importance of applying online early, the structure of the application portals, and the interview process, which includes online assessments and behavioral questions based on Amazon's Leadership Principles.
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