I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon in Mar 2015
Interview
Done entirely with a recruiter, I never spoke to anyone else even after my code test was reviewed. Was given no feedback as to why I was not the right fit for the position. After explaining that I already had a job but would still consider other offers, the recruiter all but hounded me, at one point calling multiple times in a row while I was at work, after I had swiped to decline the first couple calls.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a JSON object, build a page of items from that JSON that meets specific design parameters (4 items per row, color of title, border, margins, padding all according to spec). The spec was ugly, IMO, but whatever... I was given the design specs and was not interviewing as a designer, but as a developer. Requirements included fading images in/out on mouseover, delete an item from the list, undo a deletion, etc. Additional features included sprite display from an Amazon-provided spritesheet for showing the number of stars on reviews. All in all, it was a pretty good mix of tasks that a front end developer would be required to do on a day-to-day basis. It's that same stuff I do every day, really, except that the design specifications I usually work from are much nicer looking upon completion. I provided 100% working, validated code exactly to spec in just over two hours, tested locally on MAMP. Despite matching the exact functionality, I failed the test, or missed the point of it, because the result I got back was "we are not moving forward at this time." Pretty abrupt and non-descript considering the amount of hounding the recruiter engaged in prior to my taking the test. Never spoke with anyone from Amazon other than the recruiter and did not receive feedback from the coding review team as to what they did not like about my code.