Amazon SDE-1 FTC — cleared the OA, fell short on DP

## Background
This started with a recruiter call I missed; they followed up by email about a contract-based SDE-1 role. Since it was structured differently from a standard full-time offer, I got clarity on the contract terms up front before moving forward.

## Online assessment
On HackerRank: a fairly basic **dynamic programming** question plus an algorithmic problem combining **binary search** and tree concepts. I cleared this stage.

## Interview day
About two weeks to prepare, then two coding questions.

### Question 1 — Binary search
Manageable on the surface, but the test cases in the round were slightly different from what I expected, which threw me off and made it trickier than it first looked.

### Question 2 — Dynamic programming (medium)
The harder of the two. Looking back I hadn't put in enough targeted practice in this area, and it showed.

## Verdict
**Not selected.**