I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in May 2019
Interview
Recruiters were very professional, kept in contact all the time, and really helped me prepare. Younger interviewers were friendly. Everything else was standard.
Recruiter contacts me, asks me questions about my background, and we agree to move forward.
Then within a week I receive an online exam containing two easy to medium level leetcode questions. This is not a screen share, just an exam.
I pass and I receive a large amount of information about the final rounds and how to prepare. They were very, very helpful. I get flown to Seattle for Final round.
Final round was in the HQ in Seattle. I get put up in a nice hotel.
The interview was 5 rounds and took the entire day.
1. Whiteboard Rd.: Medium level leetcode question dealing with arrays. Interviewer was not friendly. I didn't like him and he didn't like me. His English was poor and seemed to show no effort, no interest, and give no guidance throughout the process. He seemed disinterested. Needless to say I performed poorly.
2. Systems design, friendly interviewer. Behavioral questions were tossed in.
3. Medium level leetcode question via screenshare. Interviewer was friendly and professional.
4. Behavioral. This was my 'bar raiser round' (Amazon's version of a 'super hard' interview to make sure you add to the team. Ironically enough this was the easiest round and I vibed well with the guy on the phone. They ask you a TON of behavioral questions to make sure you fit in with their 'leadership principles.' Basically they want to see if you can work well in teams. Make sure you know the leadership principles but just be prepared to speak broadly about your experience. They will ask detailed questions so have detailed answers.
30-45 min lunch break, got to see the amazon orbs. Really cool.
5. 15 min behavioral and background. Then 30-40 min whiteboarding exercise. This was medium to hard level tree based problem. This guy's english wasn't the best either, but at least he was friendly.
Given this was my first technical interview ever, I failed entirely. Needless to say I had a pleasant experience. Except for the first guy. He was terrible.
The questions were very fair, and always related in some way to amazons work. There were no gimmicky or tricky questions.
I enjoyed my experience but language and culture barriers with some interviewers made things difficult.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
NDA,
but look on leetcode's amazon page. Its a very good guide.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Vancouver, BC) in Apr 2020
Interview
My interview was virtual because of COVID-19 situation. I have 4 sessions with 4 different people. They check my algorithm skills, code maintainable and structural and data structure knowledge. Last session was about System Design.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Each interview started with questions related to Amazon's LP(first 15 min).
Then one task to code in online editor:
1.I had simple task for DFS: Given a binary tree containing digits from 0-9 only, each root-to-leaf path could represent a number. Find the total sum of all root-to-leaf numbers.
2. Given a grouping of Amazon Objects, where an Amazon Object has a name, a unique identifier, a number of clicks, and a category, can you write a function that returns the Top N
items in each category?
3. Find all files in filesystem which size is greater then 5 mb.
4. TinyUrl system design.
Very straightforward. Recruiter contacted over linkedin, then set an interview with a Sr. SDE. I was not available immediately, they were patient and set the interview in a later date.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Asked about my projects and how I handled different technical and cultural problems. Then asked a coding problem similar to but difficult than leetcode.