The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2012
Interview
Their interview process consists of two phone interviews and an in-house interview that consists of 4-7 45 minute-1 hour interviews.
For my first phone interview, the interviewer was very friendly and prompt. He called on time, explained the process and got right into the questions. For my 2nd phone interview, the guy calling me was a last minute replacement, and it showed. He was about 10 minutes late to call, sounded like he wasn't prepared and generally didn't care about the interview. I was lucky that I made it past that call... Both interviewers allowed me to ask questions for about 5 or 10 minutes after the technical questions they had.
The in house interview began at 11 and lasted until about 4:30, shorter than I was expecting. Everyone was very friendly and I really didn't feel intimidated at all. It went very well, but I didn't receive an offer.
The biggest downside to Amazon's interview process is that they don't give you feedback on why you don't receive an offer. I thought I had a very good interview, but didn't get an offer.
From what I have heard, they have a 1-2 year span after "failing" an interview that you cannot apply again to Amazon, but I was told that the result of my interview didn't prohibit me from applying to other positions. I wasn't sure how to read into that (and the recruiter was not helpful with that).
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
Phone interview 1:
1. Describe what a hash map/table is. Later evolved into how to deal with collisions.
2. Write the code to take an int array and return a new int array whose value at i is the product of all values in the input array except the value at i.
Phone Interview 2:
1. Count the number of words in a sentence.
After more definition, the problem evolved into:
Code a function that will take a String and return the number of words (continuous sequences of non white-space characters).
2. How would you model a restaurant reservation system?
In-House interview:
1. Given two int arrays, return a third int array that contains all values in the first int array that aren't in the 2nd. If a value is duplicated in the first int array, only return it once in the output array.
2. Model a deck of cards
In-house Interview
1. Write a program to print all combinations of ascending numbers that equal an input number.
2. Given a million points on a graph, return the 100 closest to the origin
Interviewed for silicon team. Have only been asked about the domain specific knowledge in 1st round and system design in 2nd round and C coding in 3rd round.
The interviews were 50 mins each.
The phone screen went longer than expected, focusing heavily on implementation details. The interviewer really grilled me on my approach to a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache, asking how I'd combine a hashmap with a doubly linked list. I felt well-prepared since I had gone through system design examples on PracHub, which made me comfortable discussing eviction policies. The later rounds included more technical questions and behavioral interviews, but in the end, I received an offer, though I ultimately decided to decline. Overall, I’d say the process was average, with solid questions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design and implement a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache supporting get(key) and put(key, value) in O(1) average time. Walk through combining a hashmap with a doubly linked list, eviction policy when capacity is exceeded, and how you'd extend it to handle thread-safe concurrent access.
Recruiter reaches out after applying through Amazon careers, no referral. Had an initial OA, then after a month had four rounds in two days - three coding one system design. Each round had 30 min behavioral and 30 min coding.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Questions were mainly hashmap, sliding window and interval related.