Sr Hardware Reliability Engineer, Hardware Engineering Services Reliability Team

Amazon

You are given an array of servers represented by their processing power. You want to join consecutive servers together to form larger, more powerful servers. You can only join server i with server i+1 if the processing power of server i+1 is strictly greater than the processing power of server i. This joining process can cascade, meaning that if you join i and i+1, and the new combined processing power is less than i+2, you can then join the combined server with i+2, and so on. The goal is to maximize the number of these larger servers. For example: Consider the array [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. You can join 1 and 2 to form 3. Then you can join 3 and 3 to form 6. Then you can join 6 and 4 to form 10. Finally, you can join 10 and 5 to form 15, resulting in one server with processing power 15. Consider the array [5, 4, 3, 2, 1]. You cannot join any servers because the processing power is always decreasing. Consider the array [1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 5]. You can join 1 and 3 to get 4. You cannot join 4 and 2. You can join 2 and 4 to get 6. You cannot join 6 and 1. You can join 1 and 5 to get 6. The final servers will be [4, 6, 6]. Write a function that takes an array of integers representing server processing powers and returns the final array of server processing powers after performing all possible joins.

Amazon

Let's design a Twitter-like service. Consider the following: Core Functionality: How would you implement the ability for users to post tweets, follow other users, and view a timeline of tweets from the users they follow? Data Model: What database schema would you use to store tweets, user information, and follower relationships? Consider scalability and efficiency for reads and writes. Scalability: How would you handle a large number of users and tweets? Discuss strategies for sharding, caching, and load balancing. Real-time Updates: How would you ensure that users see new tweets in their timeline in near real-time? Consider using technologies like WebSockets or Server-Sent Events. Search: How would you implement a search feature that allows users to find tweets containing specific keywords or hashtags? Think about indexing strategies and search algorithms. Rate Limiting: How would you prevent abuse and ensure fair usage of the service? Describe your approach to rate limiting API requests. Example Scenario: Imagine a user, Alice, follows 1,000 other users, including Bob. Bob posts a tweet. Explain how that tweet would propagate to Alice's timeline, considering potential performance bottlenecks. Technology Stack: What technologies (programming languages, frameworks, databases, etc.) would you choose and why?

Amazon

Tell me about a time you disagreed with a colleague. What was your approach to resolving the disagreement, and what was the outcome? How did you ensure that your interaction remained professional and respectful, even with differing viewpoints? For example, imagine you're working on a new feature for an e-commerce platform. You believe that a simplified checkout process will lead to higher conversion rates, while your colleague argues that adding more security steps is crucial, even if it adds friction for the user. Describe the situation, your reasoning, your colleague's reasoning, and the steps you took to reach a resolution that benefited the project and maintained a positive working relationship. What did you learn from this experience?