Amazon Software Development Engineer interview questions

This is the story of how I Bombed That Interview but had a pleasant time doing it. I was initially contacted by a recruiter through LinkedIn. They were interviewing for one or more positions in Seattle, USA, but for some reason they were traveling all the way to my part of the world (hint: Not USA) and making a big hiring event. Apparently, "new talent" is hard to come by in Seattle these days. After sending the recruiter my CV, I was directed to a website to do a coding exercise that took about two hours to finish. A few days later, I was invited to an "on-site" interview at the recruiting event. At this point, the event was about three weeks away. The interview event consisted of two interviews with a possible third or fourth interview "if we need to know more". Each interview was 50 minutes with a 10 minute break in between. The first interviewer was a Software Engineer and after a short chat about my work experience, I was given a code exercise and asked to write my solution on the whiteboard. Several days of preparation doing Codewars problems and trying my luck with paper and pencil coding did not prepare me for my biggest enemy: Complete Nuclear Meltdown (in the brain). I simply could not think straight in the situation so although I eventually arrived at something that worked, it was not pretty and it took too much time. The second interview was identical to the first but the interviewer was a Manager with a background in coding. Once again, the coding exercise made me pretty flustered. As an example, I realized a few days later that I had created an endless loop even after going over the code two times on the whiteboard. Whoops. After the first two interviews, I was told that my interview was over which was a pretty clear message that things had not gone right because they had mentioned the possibility of three and four interviews. A week later, I was called by the recruiter who confirmed what I already knew: No offer for me. To be fair, there could have been other things contributing to their decision than my coding abilities but unfortunately, they have a policy of not providing feedback to candidates, so I will never know if they also thought I was lacking in other areas. Overall, the communication was very smooth and professional and all the people I interacted with were very nice so the experience was pleasant. Biggest takeaway from all this: Practice more and try and keep a cool head.

I was contacted by a recruiter via LinkedIn and proposed to have an initial phone conversation. During the conversations I got some information about the team they were hiring for, expectations from a candidate, and I provided some information about myself. Then recruiter asked how much time I needed to be prepared for the technical phone screen and scheduled it the next week after my response. The phone screen was conducted by an experienced engineer and it was 1-hour long. They called the next day after the phone screen and informed me that I passed the interview and invited me to on-site interview in Seattle. The company paid for my flight to/from Seattle as well as for my 2-night stay in 4-star hotel close to the office. They even reimbursed taxi to/from airport, meals and car parking in my local airport. Recruiter was nice and very helpful in the process, she prepared me for behavioral questions that would be asked. I had 5 interviews 45 minutes each during the day. Everyone was nice and friendly, questions were not very hard but still required deep and careful thinking. Recruiter called me the next day while I was still on my way back home and congratulated me on successfully passed on-site interview.