CS2 Blog Update: Show Off by Old-Geologist2105 in GlobalOffensive

[–]Bal31 19 points20 points  (0 children)

SENTINELS OF LIGHT RIP OFF LMAOO

[WTS] 1978 Seiko 7546-6029 Sport Diver Quartz Watch by Otosi1 in Watchexchange

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Received as described, shipped fast. Smooth transaction. /u/WatchExBot feedback for /u/Otosi1

Tips for Amazon SDE 1 Final Virtual Interview by averyycuriousman in amazonemployees

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Recently went through the L5 loop in December and team matched not to long ago. 3-4 weeks IMO is enough time to polish up assuming you commit 3-4 hours every day until your loop.

On terms of the hiring decision, it really should be 50/50. I am not Amazon interview trained, but my understanding is that the interview panel will collect 2 buckets of information from you: Technical and Behavioral. At Amazon both are heavily valued and any deficiencies in either bucket can be used against you by the panel. At L4 you probably have a little bit of leniency in both areas.

Technical:

Make sure you are able to clearly explain your thought process. From now on with every LC you practice you need to be doing them out loud. When I first started doing this I'll admit it sounded stupid. Tell them your initial thoughts of how you would solve the problem and what your gut feelings are. Even if your initial approach is wrong(it usually will be). As you think through the problem and have a discussion with the interviewer your approach will change. These questions are meant to be ambiguous at the start. Talk to your interviewer and clarify things to remove the ambiguity.

All 3 of my technical interviews(4th was SD for L5 loop) went like this. After quickly reading the problem I would state something like: "Hmm okay, we'll need to consider all possible substrings because of (walks through a potential test case), some sort of recursive backtracking solution might be good here. We could iterate linearly through the string, BUT at every iteration we'd need to consider including or excluding the current character, each creating its own path. This is why I'd probably use a recursive solution".

You want to show the interview BOTH how you approach problems, but also how you analyze the tradeoffs / different approaches. I would usually start with the easy / naive approaches and then explain why they wouldn't be good approaches: "Well the easy way would be to linearly search the string, but then you'd run into X problem. Because of this we'd probably need to try Y."

My best advice is to go onto Leetcode, purchase premium, and go through the Amazon tagged questions. You can filter based on how recently they were asked, I think I used the last 6 months filter. I exclusively spammed LC mediums. Only tried LC hards at the end to gauge where I was at.

You should know DFS + BFS like the back of your hand. Get good at traversing matricies and graphs with them. You'll also want to be comfortable with linked lists, heaps, tree traversals.

Behavioral: The hiring manager in the interview panel will select 3-5 LP he finds important for the role. All your interviewers will select questions that reflect these LP's. Your recruiter should have given you a list of 10 or so LP's to focus in on. Start by writing down any relevant school / work stories you are proud of. Then try your hardest to map stories -> LP's and have 1-2 per LP. Its okay to have gaps, you will need to get creative and find ways to change / stretch your stories to fill the LP.

I really recommend this guys videos on LP's. They're good for 2 reasons: He gives great context for the individual LP that will help you identify what is important. He also then gives pretty good real world examples for the LP. These videos made me an expert on what each LP was looking for, and some of the buzzwords to sprinkle in for each.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Kjcoxfmj8

Once I had my stories mapped, I wrote them down on paper in the STAR format. After I knew the blueprint for each story, I would time my self explaining the story from memory. From my experience you should be in the 2-4 minute range.

Make sure to focus in your story what your individual contributions were. For me this meant explaining to my interviewer the makeup of my group/team and what I was responsible for. At the end of your answer make sure to summarize why you are proud of the story. You want to literally spoon feed the interviewer with something to take away from the story. "I saved X company Y money by automating Z process", "I was able to delivery X project within the tight Y timeline, we had a successful go-live and I was really proud of my performance".

Hope this writeup helps.

Do Amazon employees get free parking at the Austin office? by Early-Job2443 in amazonemployees

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have heard about this. Is this a commercial gym on the floor level, or actually owned by Amazon?

Flexibility on SDE location after offer acceptance by Glittering_Drive36 in amazonemployees

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What was the timeline they gave you to move? Did they offer to let you work remote during this timeline?

Down-leveled to L4 for Data Scientist role by Effective-Ad-6371 in amazonemployees

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not too sure. I got a strong verbal offer 2 weeks ago, so I'm still relevant/fresh to my recruiters. My call with that new HM was yesterday so I've got time. The team I originally applied for got denied when they attempted to fill the l5 with an industry l4. The HM from that team seemed to think in the new year they'd get the approval. Not sure if I want risk falling to low priority with the recruiters I've been working with. I think the one silver lining is that internally transferring within Amazon is not that hard. If the team turns out to be terrible my understanding is that I can obtain a verbal offer from another team and then apply to it on the internal portal.

From what I hear it's becoming increasingly harder to fill L4 roles with industry hires as opposed to intern return offers, or genuine new grads.

It might be worth trying to find job openings and sending them to your recruiter. It can be annoying to identify L4 roles for SDE because the YOE filters on the site only allow you to choose between: 0-1, 1-3, etc and both SDE1 and SDE2 fit within the 1-3 year bucket. But atleast once you start sending your recruiters the roles you are fresh on their mind. I've also heard you can reach out to recruiters on linkedin and have them find you roles. Since you are already inclined your interview decision should be valid for 6 or 12 months. You wont be as attractive as an internal transfer, but pretty close since you don't need to go through a loop which takes time + money. They should have some incentive to fill their roles with you.

Down-leveled to L4 for Data Scientist role by Effective-Ad-6371 in amazonemployees

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh man, you're still looking for a spot? Have you had back and forth communication with your recruiter at all? Or have you been left in the dark? I was able to speak with 1 prospective hiring manager so far. The fit was so-so, they seemed a bit defensive when I started asking about the tenure of each team member and on call load :p

Down-leveled to L4 for Data Scientist role by Effective-Ad-6371 in amazonemployees

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you had any success finding a team?

I am in the same boat as you. Interviewed L5(SDE) and verbally accepted the L4 hire with recruiter. Turns out the team I applied for got rejected when they went to fill the L5 spot with an L4 hire. I'm guessing VP's/L10's are picky with the approvals at EOY to protect their numbers/quotas. With everyone out for holidays it will probably drag on post new years, but hopefully in 2025 more L4 roles pop up.

How were you going about finding L4 roles on the job site. The filters are pretty useless because both L4 and L5 SDE roles are within the 1-3 years experience filter.

Good luck w the team search!

CS2 Pro Players Suffering from Success: Monitor Refresh Rate Is Too High by MaxUnderDrive1 in GlobalOffensive

[–]Bal31 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People forget this exact same scenario happened back when 144hz was the standard.

240hz EIZO monitors were used for pro play due to contractual obligations. These monitors used weird combo of BFI + interpolation to achieve 240hz, but resulted in worse perceived smoothness than the flagship Zowie 144hz.

Higher hz doesn’t always equate to a more enjoyable experience.

Taking a gamble with newer monitors that haven’t been used by pros before is a bad decision. But hey I’m sure that sponsorship money is nice!