I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2011
Interview
2 rounds of phone interviews, then 6 on-site.
Standard tech interview questions: binary trees, string parsing. Lots of discussion of memory management, performance, managed vs unmanaged code. Whiteboard coding of course.
I ended up in a conference room where the interviewers came to me... this means that there were no breaks in between, so it ended up being rather rapid-fire and I wasn't thinking as clearly by the end of the day. All the interviewers were really nice though and would have been good coworkers.
Amazon seems like a fast-moving company with a lot of cool stuff happening. They're getting big but they haven't realized it yet... they need to grow up a bit and realize that working people to the bone is not sustainable nor does it produce good long-term results. They offer a lot of money but it's not so mind-blowing once you figure in healthcare costs, no annual bonus, etc. Lots of stock in the compensation, so your comp is strongly dependent on how you think the stock will do. At a P/E of > 100 (as of 12/11), there's not a lot of headroom there.
OA contained 2 coding questions and then followed by a multiple choice question on behavioral where they emphasized a lot on their leadership rules which you can find on their website
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is customer obsession and how do you apply it
Could not use AI during the first interview. The recruiter was helpful in the screener but the coding exam was tough including the take home test. Did a few Leetcode examples but apparently that wasn't enough.
Applied online via the company careers page. Received a reply from HR within a few weeks inviting me to an initial
screening call over Teams. Process also included an online coding assessment sent as a pre-interview step.
Communication from HR was professional, prompt, and friendly throughout the scheduling stage.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard background and motivation questions — what attracted me to the company, and a walk-through of recent