I applied through an employee referral. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Nov 2012
Interview
I had two phone interviews. Those went really well and the interviewers were pretty friendly. I had a little bit of trouble understanding the second interviewer who had an thick accent. But highly knowledgeable and gave me fun program to solve. After the initials phone screening the recruiters coordinated with me with flight tickets and hotel arrangements in Seattle, Wa.
The on site interview was not pleasant for me. The reason for that was I was very tired after a six hours flight cross country. When I reached Seattle, WA I could not sleep that night with a little bit of nerves and expectation. I really wanted the job but after the lunch my interview went into a downward spiral and the last interview I think I totally flunked and wasted the interviewer's time which was the most important as he mentioned he was from outside the group that I was being interviewed for (Or so called Amazon's Bar raiser).
Overall people are so friendly and the problems are not difficult. You can solve them with your eyes closed given time and in an relaxed environment. But if you succumb to pressure and easily stressed things can go wrong and will go wrong as I found out.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Nothing was too difficult, just usual data structure/Algorithms and fundamental CS stuff. I have written no disclosure agreement so can't disclose anything here. But every one looking forward to work there must emphasis on recursion and Tree structure.
I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Amazon
Interview
The process started with a brief 30-minute phone screening with a recruiter, focusing on my background and resume.
After that, I was invite to a technical video interview with a senior engineer. This round lasted about 60 minutes, starting with a brief introduction, followed by a live coding challenge on a shared editor, and ended with a few questions about system design basics and my past projects.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a function to find the first non-repeating character in a string and discuss its time and space complexity.
total 5 rounds - First OA assessment, quick telephone interview with recruiter, followed by 4 back to back technical and behavioral rounds. In technical round question were around topological graph sorting, cycle detection in linked list, and LRU cache. In behavioral round, the question were based on their 16 principles.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you manage the disagreement at your workplace.
I got a take home exam on HackerRank that I did not do great in. I did not perfectly solve every problem. Then it was another problem with "AI assistance" except the AI seemed programmed to be as useless as possible, it's genuinely better to just not use it. Somehow I got the next interview anyways, who also asked me some leetcode style questions and asked my to explain my experience and then next day they rejected me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the most complex problem I have encountered?
Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Amazon with 3.3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 48% positive. To compare, the company-average is 57.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 24 days to get hired, when considering 3,658 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Amazon overall takes an average of 28 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Amazon as a Software Engineer according to 3,658 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 30%
One on one interview: 18%
Skills test: 17%
Presentation: 10%
Personality test: 7%
Group panel interview: 6%
IQ intelligence test: 5%
Background check: 4%
Other: 2%
Drug test: 2%
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