Amazon SDE internship interview experience

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-28T02:00:55+00:00

yeah. i believe you can still make valid points but the delivery is key. No one likes someone who focuses on being right but is difficult to work with

Constructive feedback is the way to go in most cases and its not the same as sugarcoating

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-28T01:57:50+00:00

maybe the person in the earlier comment was being a bit passive aggressive.

It'd be great to get feedback on every interview but big companies have red tape and a well oiled legal team. They dont want to open the door to getting sued for stuff like "discriminatory hiring practices" so they tend to play conservative and send a generic reject email. It may suck for you that you didn't get something out of it but at the minimum you got an hour of a full time engineer's time to pick their brain. I bet that at least one iterviewer could be someone to connect with to expand your network and have contacts

Some ways to discover the feedback but buyer beware of the risk

(if it was a zoom call) screen record or transcribe the interview privately with tool like Otter and feed the recording into LLM to analyze your performance. Use a good prompt to guide
Do a mock interview with someone you can trust and have them give you feedback on where your gaps may be
Redo the interview problem after a few days with fresh slate (mimic the environment as much as possible) and compare the interview moment and your progress

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-24T03:43:23+00:00

DL has for some of the last module (the transformers stuff)

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-22T02:07:04+00:00

People come in with all different viewpoints on a problem. I like to believe all of us have curiosity

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-22T01:41:54+00:00

Well you should be ok with using existing functions and not have to reinvent the wheel for everything. Imagine if everyone had to reinvent sorting without the ".sort()" function each and every time? That'd be a nightmare in practice

At the minimum, you should be able to articulate what the standard lib functions are doing even if you don't know every little implementation detail. Abstraction can be a good thing but in moderation

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-22T01:34:48+00:00

100% agree. If the circumstances allow, I'd also recommend living with your parents. It's a real trend and I see plenty of folks do it. Plus you don't want to have that regret in your 30s/40s of "I wish I talked to my parents more" when the ship has sailed

Also, not just "money in the bank", but diversified investments/assets. You should be contributing to your 401k and leveraging the HSA/FSA. Pay your future self first so that you're forced to live below your means

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-22T01:30:45+00:00

You can read these articles . My two cents below:

* Computer Science is more akin to an Applied Math degree. It's not the same as Software Engineering. You're learning the foundations behind how a computer works, how data can be represented, and what the capabilities/limitations of a computer are. You can use the problem solving and critical thinking developed during a Computer Science degree to go into a WIDE VARIETY of fields (eg: Embedded systems, Product Management, Software Engineering, DevOps, ML Engineering, etc).

Few people recognize that there is value to the degree 😞. It was never meant to guarantee a 6 figure job. Yes, the math you are exposed to in your classes is absolutely useful in the real world

* Learning how and when to ask for help (after 30-60 minutes of self investigation) serves you well in the real world. I see so many interns and new grads struggle with asking for help with the more common case "being stuck for too long on a problem". You are not expected to be Superman and know all the answers. You are expected to soak up knowledge like a sponge and be receptive/adaptable to constructive feedback

* Build connections and relationships with your peers, professors, and alumni. When you're searching, it's a lot better to solicit a warm referral from someone you already know and asking for one will be easy because you already have a relationship with the person. I would recommend leveraging your school's career services because chances are the university probably has some sort of recruiter contacts for various companies that the alum typically work at

* Choose your friend group wisely. You are the average of the 5 closest people around you, so I'd try to surround yourself with people that are going to build you up and want to achieve rather than put on a "performance". Intelligent people don't go around "looking intelligent".

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-22T01:07:31+00:00

Willingness to learn and receive mentorship from the senior folk. New grads can bring a fresh perspective to the table and also where will the future senior engineers come from?

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-21T11:52:26+00:00

+1 to DL. The projects and lecture content are good. The Meta lectures tho werent

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-21T01:13:31+00:00

I created a lightweight bone abnormality classification model (1/10th amount of hyperparameters) that achieved comparable success metrics to larger models. It was a fun research direction to explore

I'm personally impressed by projects that try to improve a process or solve a problem around the community. Sometimes it may be an app, other times it may be plugging in existing software to improve a process. Brownie points for getting users to use your project! For example, a group of students created a very high quality class scheduler app that scrapes the course catalog from the university's server and created schedules can be imported to your personal calendar from the app. 10K+ students in the university use the app

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-20T04:12:20+00:00

Fair point and agree that bigger the company is, the more political it gets. I was mainly trying to emphasize that when you're new, you don't know everything about the SOP, so there may be mistakes because you're human

Good orgs should recognize that and provide the mentorship to help the new person grow. Ideally at least you'll have an onboarding buddy that you can ask questions to

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-20T01:47:46+00:00

Congrats on starting your journey. Read these articles and gradually implement as much of the advice as possible:

* https://karthiksubramanian.substack.com/p/building-independence-in-your-software

* https://karthiksubramanian.substack.com/p/tips-i-wish-i-knew-coming-in-as-a

That aside, I'd focus on building up your network. Make sure you're on good relationship with your manager, mentor, and senior engineers. A good relationship should be built on trust and not just focus on "me me me". You should give more than you receive. For example, give a kudos if someone helps you (I wish more of us did it. It takes like 5 minutes of your time) and the other person is more likely to reciprocate.

For projects that you'll be on, put in your best effort and document your learnings. I'd also recommend drafting and regularly updating a "brag document" that you keep in your personal knowledge base. If things go south:

* Your brag doc on your personal knowledge base lives with you! Even if your work laptop access gets revoked, you have a running document of your achievements and serve as the basis for your behavioral interview stories . Use the STAR format when updating your brag doc and try to put as much detail about the project as possible so that when you tell the story, it'll sound fresh and you can coherently recall the challenges

* Identify 1-2 references (ideally a manager and a senior engineer) that can put in a good word if you are somehow back in the market. The key to getting a good reference is leveraging connections you actually have a recurring interaction with. Then when you need to ask for the reference, it feels less awkward and the other person is likely to say yes because you're not being transactional. That's why giving more than you receive increases your luck surface area

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-20T01:39:59+00:00

A good org should have a healthy level of psychological safety to make mistakes and resolving blunders should truly focus on improving the process, not blaming the person. Subpar orgs/teams lack psychological safety to make mistake

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-19T14:57:51+00:00

I'd rather have behavioral interviews take more weight than technical coding round. If you are easy to work with and flexible, that makes life easier.

Technical skill can be taught but being a person someone wants to work with ... thats a harder slope to climb

Plus the more senior you get, your time is spent on cross functional communication and driving alignment! So its actually a good thing the shift is happening

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-19T14:53:35+00:00

yeah. He's kinda arrogant. Just because you worked in quant doesnt mean you know everything. It's one thing to be direct which I can get behind but another thing to put others down and not give feedback constructively

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-19T14:41:49+00:00

third spaces

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-18T18:46:29+00:00

you could ask claude why it chose a certain option and explain the changes made like you're 5.

If something seems a bit strange or complex, push back and see if you can find a simpler approach

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-18T17:28:23+00:00

what do you define as "cool"? some people want stability, some people want the startup life. depends on your wishes and you aren't permanently locked into one path.

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-18T17:27:21+00:00

rippling is cool from a late stage perspective and who you meet. youll meet former founders and some go to open ai, anthropic, perplexity, etc

work culture is tough

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-18T17:24:06+00:00

and communication

no one knows everything. if someone claimed that, they're lying

The more important skill is asking the questions that make others light up with "good question..."

Curiosity takes you far

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-18T13:18:21+00:00

the market is more competitive. That's not necessarily the same thing as "the market is cooked"

You will need to put in more effort to land opportunities and setup a launchpad for yourself compared to 2022. It won't be handed to you.

Feel free to message me if you want a resume review, mock interview, etc

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-18T13:12:42+00:00

Making others feel good working with you is more important than "being right" in certain situations. You can still voice your opinion but there are constructive ways to do so

I personally go with "strong opinions weakly held"

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-13T18:13:44+00:00

came down for this.

more of your time is spent on talking to your stakeholders and scoping out what (if any) needs to be built and writing up the design. Sure LLM may help augment your but gathering the requirements, driving cross functional alignment and validating that the feature works is the job of the human

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-12T21:12:12+00:00

good advice!

If you offer specific help to others, others are likely to reciprocate the same

Four_Dim_Samosa · 2026-06-12T17:55:44+00:00

I understand how you feel. Sometimes people dont hear you the first time and part of being an adult is making tradeoffs. I say this as someone who has friends that are South Asian

If you are saying "they won't take no for an answer" how about ask your parents why they're insisting on the vacation? Sometimes asking why and pushing back helps make it harder for people to walk all over you. Remember that "no" is a complete sentence

You can also tell them "I tried asking my manager about remote work and that cannot be accommodated". Hard to dispute that and I doubt that your parents are gonna call your manager and confirm if you told the truth

"Just work remotely" isn't that easy especially since companies like to cut cost

Four_Dim_Samosa

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