AMAZON – My First Ever Coding Assessment

I just wanted to post this in case anyone might find it helpful and also just to reflect a bit on my first ever real world coding assessment. Funny that my first go at it was with none other than Amazon!

Quick Background:

I majored in music and have been working on concert productions for several years now. I've got a few years of programming experience, starting with random online courses using Python and Ruby in 2020 and then eventually the bridge to master's in CS from NYU Tandon using C++ in 2021. Other than that I've been fairly self-taught. I currently build and implement software solutions in C++ to streamline my work prepping films for Disney concert productions; Media, Audio, Video, stuff like that. I have around 240 LC problems completed at this point.

The Experience:

I did 2 coding problems with a 90 minute total. I'm going to try and track down the first problem on here, but for now I could only find ones similar to the second one. It wasn't any of these exactly, but it was close: 159, 318 and 340.

EDIT: The first of these two problems was along the lines and difficulty of #220 – Contains Duplicate III.

I then did a work simulation exercise with a mock work email interface and simulated real world problems. It was un-timed, but I think it took me around 20 minutes. I would get emails from colleagues discussing projects we needed to build and I would get an attached survey with each email that gave me about 5 different approaches to pick from. These surveys had a scale from 1-5 on each option that I'd use to either rate effectiveness or priority in implementation.

Finally, I had a questionnaire that focused on my work philosophy. Each question gave two sort of personal statement, with four selectable options between them, to rate on a scale which one I was more likely to say or do.

General Thoughts:

Seeing as how this was my first real-world coding interview or assessment I felt pretty good in the end. I guess I always imagined it to be a bit scarier than it was, but it really did feel like I was on Leetcode or taking exams in the NYU program. Now, that doesn't mean I wasn't nervous and that I did particularly well to be honest. Here's how it went down for me:

I implemented a solution on the first problem in about 15 minutes, but it was more of a brute force approach so it timed out. On both of the questions, I had a fairly strict runtime requirement of 2 seconds for all of the cases combined I think (no specified time complexity requirement, just something that said "2 sec"). So I got hung up for about 40 minutes trying to work out an efficient approach that wouldn't time the system out and that would also pass. With only 30 minutes left I was only able to pass a few test cases, but I decided to work on the second problems so I could at least have a submission for both. Again, I started with too inefficient of an approach and timed the system out. Working back from there I was able to pass around 60-70% of the test cases with about 9 or 10 minutes left. I decided to commit to what I had for that question, submit and try again on the first one while I still had some time left. Maybe it was the rush of pushing against the timer, I don't know, but I rewrote my solution with a better approach and ended up passing several more test cases than I had been! I was still only up to passing 60 or 70% of the cases on that one, but I was out of time so I submitted my answers. No, it didn't give me any immediate feedback so it looks like I have to wait for an email from recruitment.

I honestly feel pretty good about getting this first assessment done. I don't know if they require I pass this test 100% to be accepted, but I thinks it's quite likely I don't get through on this one. However, from what I'm reading it looks pretty good to go back after some amount of time and pass in the future (they let you know when you are eligible to retake the assessment). I'm looking forward to doing it again!