"During the interview, my mind went completely blank. Luckily, you were there typing guidance in real-time, or I wouldn’t have been able to say a complete sentence."

This was real feedback from a candidate preparing for an Amazon Software Development Engineer (SDE) interview. He had a decent background but lacked hands-on experience. He especially struggled with algorithm and data handling problems. More critically, under high-pressure interview settings—when someone is watching you code and demanding your thought process—he would often freeze and fail to articulate even the most basic ideas.

Without CSOAHELP’s real-time remote interview assistance, he would have likely been eliminated in the first round.

But in the end, he passed—and not just barely, but with a positive evaluation. This article documents that interview session, showing how in big-tech interviews, “knowing the answer” is just the baseline. The real challenge is: can you remain clear-headed and articulate under pressure?

That’s where we come in.

This particular question was asked in Amazon’s first-round technical interview. It’s a light-weight algorithmic problem with a business context.

Question: Sellers buy items in Walmart during sale events and sell them on Amazon to make money. You have to help a seller make maximum profit for their purchase. You are given two lists, one for Walmart price and another for Amazon price of an item over a period of time. The ith entry in both lists is the price of the item at ith time in Amazon and Walmart.

Example: Walmart: [4, 7, 5, 8] Amazon: [6, 8, 7, 8]

Answer: 4; Seller can buy the item at 0th time index from Walmart at $4 and sell at Amazon on 1st time index at $8, making the profit of $4

The candidate was visibly flustered just reading the question. He tried to figure out where the maximum profit lay in the input, but couldn’t find a clear path. After a few seconds of silence, the interviewer gently encouraged him to think out loud.

At this point, our remote assistance system was fully activated. We typed a suggestion on the second screen; the candidate only needed to glance at it, digest the idea, and restate it in his own words.

Our prompt read:

“Start by clarifying your understanding: ‘We need to identify the lowest price at any time point in Walmart, and the highest sell price in Amazon that comes after that time. The goal is to maximize the price difference.’ Then add: ‘So I’ll loop through the Walmart list, and for each time point, compare with all possible future Amazon prices, calculate profits, and take the maximum.’”

The candidate followed this advice and spoke up immediately—actually sounding more natural than our prompt. The interviewer nodded and asked how he would implement it efficiently.

The candidate hesitated, but we quickly pushed the next set of guidance onto the second screen.

We told him: “First, you can mention a brute-force solution using nested loops, with time complexity O(n²). Then immediately follow up: ‘But we can optimize this to O(n) by tracking the minimum Walmart price seen so far as we iterate.’ The key is to show awareness of performance.”

He repeated our suggestion smoothly, regained confidence, and added, “This feels very similar to the classic stock buy-sell profit problem.” The interviewer smiled and said, “Exactly.”

Next came a follow-up twist: what if you can only sell at a later time point—not the same index where you bought it?

The candidate was unsure if this changed anything. We quickly nudged him with clarification:

“Confirm the constraint. You can say: ‘Thanks for the clarification. The original logic already assumes we only compare with future Amazon prices, but I’ll make sure to explicitly skip the same index in my implementation to be precise.’”

This answer was tight and respectful of the constraint, and the interviewer appreciated his attention to detail.

Then came the scalability test: What if the input list had millions of entries? Would your solution still work?

The candidate hesitated. We prompted him to discuss time and space complexity:

“You can say: ‘The optimized linear solution scales well. But under memory constraints, we might need to process the data in chunks or adopt a streaming model.’”

He delivered this response confidently, and added: “If the data comes from a warehouse or logs, we could even pre-process to compute the max profit ranges in advance.”

The interviewer’s posture relaxed, and they shifted into a conversation about real-world applications.

At that point, the interview wasn’t about solving a problem—it became a dialogue. That’s the shift we aim for with real-time remote support.

Before ending the call, the interviewer noted that he appreciated the candidate’s ability to adapt his thought process under changing constraints.

We knew, though, that this “adaptability” didn’t exist at the start.

Each time the interviewer asked a follow-up, we had already laid out the structure, phrasing, and logic on his second screen. He didn’t need to write a perfect answer—he just had to read, understand, and deliver it confidently.

That’s what we do.

Some people might wonder: isn’t this “cheating”? But the truth is, many candidates are qualified—they just underperform under pressure.

Maybe you have the logic but can’t organize your thoughts. Maybe you can code but freeze when grilled. Maybe your English is fine, but once interrupted, you can’t finish a sentence.

In this Amazon interview, we prepared everything: the thought process, the answer structure, the code hints. Every time he was about to speak, we had a quiet prompt ready. If code was required, we guided the function structure and variable naming subtly. As long as he understood the logic, he could say it.

In the end, not only did he pass—he was praised for being “clear and complete.”

We don’t answer questions for you. We just make sure that in your most important moment, you don’t panic alone.

CSOAHELP’s real-time interview assistance doesn’t fabricate answers, invent stories, or lie about your experience. We don’t cheat—we help you not fail.

You do the talking. You show your skills. We make sure your thinking is stable underneath.

Are you ready for your next round? If you’re not doing it alone, the outcome might look very different.

Contact CSOAHELP. Let’s unlock that offer together.

经过csoahelp的面试辅助，候选人获取了良好的面试表现。如果您需要面试辅助或面试代面服务，帮助您进入梦想中的大厂，请随时联系我。

If you need more interview support or interview proxy practice, feel free to contact us. We offer comprehensive interview support services to help you successfully land a job at your dream company.