I applied online. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2013
Interview
Applied for a intern position last year. Apparently all positions were full at the time and invited me to interview for a full time position this year instead.
Started off as 3 online technical questions. Know your basic data structures and algorithms in and out and it will be (and should be) a breeze. Remember to relax though.
If you pass they will invite you to a onsite interview. Amazon will take very good care of you during the interview process, flight, rooming, expenses will be all paid for (within reason).
The onsite interview will start off with lunch with a bunch of other candidates and some interviewers. Don't worry, you are NOT competing against each other, Amazon needs every smart person they can get.
After lunch they will move you to your testing room, where you stay and 4 interviewer will come in and out with various HR questions combined with the programming question.
Other --
Amazon will give you documents on what to expect during the interview. Honestly I think the process is very fair as they don't throw any curve balls.
Tips --
* Again, I cannot stress enough to know your data structures and algorithms (graph traversals, structures of dynamic programming, etc). They are the building blocks for solving any type of programming problem.
* Talk, no matter how stupid it sounds. Talk out what you're doing. Talk if you're stuck, talk if you have an idea, talk as you write down line for line.
* Always remember to smile this should be easy as you should be enjoying this. If not, you might be in the wrong field.
Complaints:
Being bombarded by 4 interviewers and while your brain is racing as fast as possible is exhausting. Amazon does not pay/reimburse alcoholic purchases. As many fellow interviewees genuinely wish to de-stress afterwards.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Honoring the NDA. If you want to be prepared, take a look at your old programming assignments. (Data structures, algorithms) can you do it from scratch? Most of it complete under an hour? What if they change it to another variant? Can you recognize it?
Interview by recuriter, Phone interview over Chime with one easy Leet code problem and 2 behavioral questions. Although the interviewer was very casual at the start of the conversation, it quickly changed into behavioral questions at the start.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Encoding optimization algorithm and talk about a project you did recently.
First round is just leet code coding which screens through AI before going into live coding. Pretty simple and straighforward. Not too tough. Recruiter walks through it pretty nicely. Not sure how many rounds there are exactly
After submitting my application for the Software Engineer position, I received an invitation to complete an automated Online Assessment (OA). The assessment consisted of standard coding challenges, primarily focusing on algorithmic and data structure problems. Unfortunately, a few days after submitting my solutions for the assessment, I received an email informing me that I would not be moving forward in the interview process and was rejected.