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 67% positive. To compare, the company-average is 61.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
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I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (San Francisco, CA) in Sep 2011
Interview
I was contacted via a recruiter who had previously contacted me regarding a position to which I did not apply, however this position was more relevant so I applied to the position and a phone screen was scheduled.
The phone screen only lasted an hour and included a technical quiz of object oriented principles followed by two programming problems which were addressed via a shared screen.
It is critical to understand that Amazon.com lets every team handle their own hiring, so experiences can greatly differ from team-to-team.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the difference between abstraction, encapsulation, and inheritance?
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2011
Interview
I was in one room for 6 hours and had 5 1 on 1 interviews. The recruiter changed the interview dates and sent me to a building that was not on their directory. Thanks to the mix-up I was late, I'm sure this was a mark against me.
The five people who interviewed me were nice enough. I have a feeling they weren't really interested in interviewing me as they all seemed kind of checked out throughout the whole process. Lots of brain teasers. Lots of questions on Sorting and Hashing. QuckSorts and HeapSorts. I got the feeling that my answers were correct and good enough but they had already decided on their candidate.
The impression I left was not favorable due to the issues getting to the interview and the overall atmosphere- lots of for-show security around the buildings, high on image, low on substance.
Final impressions: everyone I spoke with was very smart and very nice but at the end of the day they seemed less than the sum of their parts which is unfortunate- I can envision each one of them doing something more fulfilling.