The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2011
Interview
I was in one room for 6 hours and had 5 1 on 1 interviews. The recruiter changed the interview dates and sent me to a building that was not on their directory. Thanks to the mix-up I was late, I'm sure this was a mark against me.
The five people who interviewed me were nice enough. I have a feeling they weren't really interested in interviewing me as they all seemed kind of checked out throughout the whole process. Lots of brain teasers. Lots of questions on Sorting and Hashing. QuckSorts and HeapSorts. I got the feeling that my answers were correct and good enough but they had already decided on their candidate.
The impression I left was not favorable due to the issues getting to the interview and the overall atmosphere- lots of for-show security around the buildings, high on image, low on substance.
Final impressions: everyone I spoke with was very smart and very nice but at the end of the day they seemed less than the sum of their parts which is unfortunate- I can envision each one of them doing something more fulfilling.
Great interview process with three rounds, including a technical assessment and a technical interview. The interviewers were professional and supportive throughout the process. The questions mainly focused on DSA, problem-solving, and core technical concepts. The discussions were engaging and provided a good opportunity to demonstrate technical skills. Overall, the process was well-structured, smooth, transparent, and a very positive experience.
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Amazon (Dublin, Dublin)
Interview
Online techincal assessment. Had to screen share and complete basic coding tasks similar to Leet Code. Could choose a language of your choice. Overall a very fair system and judged based on merit.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical assessment so a basic leet code style question about reversing the orders of long numerical strings.
Loop — 4 rounds, all on the same day
Round 1 — Coding (DSA)
Interviewer was a senior SDE, very friendly.
Warm-up + behavioral: "Tell me about a time you took ownership of something outside your responsibilities."
Main question: Given a list of meeting intervals, find the minimum number of conference rooms required. I used a heap. He then asked a follow-up: what if meetings could be reassigned to minimize total idle time? We discussed approaches but didn't fully code it.
He cared a lot about how I talked through edge cases out loud.
Round 2 — Coding + Problem Solving
LP question: "Describe a situation where you disagreed with a teammate."
Coding: LRU Cache implementation from scratch. I used a hashmap + doubly linked list. He pushed on thread-safety and what happens at capacity 0.
Round 3 — Behavioral (Bar Raiser)
This was the toughest round — no coding, all Leadership Principles, very deep STAR-format probing.
Questions I got:
"Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned."
"A time you had to deliver something with a tight deadline and limited information."
The bar raiser kept drilling: "What was your specific contribution?" "What would you do differently?" "What data did you use?" Have 6–8 strong stories ready with metrics.
Round 4 — Low-Level Design
Design: Design a parking lot system (classes, vehicle types, spot allocation, pricing). Then he asked me to code the findSpot() and releaseSpot() methods.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Most coding questions were LeetCode Medium. Common themes: graphs, heaps, sliding window, hashmaps, and LRU/design., system design,
