I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2013
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter for FBA team and asked me to fly in for onsite interview.
On the day of the interview, I was taken to a room and said whole of my interview process will be dealt in the same room.
First interview was with the director of the team. Basic questions on string, but I was very much surprised by the authoritative manner expressed by him. He was not ready to hear what I tried to explain nor tried to understand. So in the mid of interview process I almost lost interest. I was not given time to rewrite the code, as we mostly don't get optimized solution at first go. I did (int)c - 97 to get the ascii value of a character from a to z and mapping it to 0-25, which took him by surprise and asked why i dint use toascii.
Second interview was with some manager. It was an easy question. though i coded it, i din come up with a solution which is common as it dint strike me. It was my fault. and there was a design question, but not enough time.
Third interview was with senior developer. It was a system design question. It went pretty well. I was able to answer and come up with solutions.
Fourth interview was with a developer. This guy also showed his attitude. Though the question was pretty simple, I made an error which i immediately rectified. Also I must say got a nervous.
It was 3 hours long interview with no break in middle except for water or coffee.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
There was no unexpected or difficult Question.
1. Find the first non repetitive character in a character stream.
2. Check for prime number and Elevator system design.
3. Agent bidding system design
4. Find for subtree within a larger tree.
I ha three technical phone screens and then onsite.
Onsite interview was like a coding problem and the students are divided in to a group of 3.
We need to solve it and the engineers would come over and will ask your design and way of approach to the problem. Later some time they will call you and review the code.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Its says team project. But remember each member is evaluated independently.