Amazon's AWS group reached out to me through Linked In and asked for a call with the hiring director. I had heard a lot of strange things about Amazon but was intrigued so I took the call.
The initial call went well. The director answered my concerns and questions very honestly and was very straightforward.
The next contact was with an internal recruiter who setup a phone interview with team members. However, the recruiter did not tell me about it and it was sheer luck that I reached out to her to find out status the day before the interviews. We rescheduled to a day when I could make it.
The phone interviews went really well. The questions were not as bizarre as I had expected, mostly they focused on me providing specific examples of my experienced and how I handled them.
Next I was brought in for a day-long, in-person interview. This was preceded by an essay question where I wrote up how I had solved a complex problem.
I enjoyed the day with the team and thought we go along well. Again, the questions were looking for specific examples of things I had done. They focused a lot on the Amazon Leadership Principles (they warned me about this beforehand and had provided a link) and I felt like I provided good examples of those principles.
I was most impressed by their interest in failures and lessons learned.
They turned me down without explanation. I was very surprised by that since I thought we had connected really well and were a good fit.
Based on what they said during the interview, I think they have a deep cultural problem where they want more mid-to-high level employees, but they don't want to give up their feeling of being the smartest people in the room. So if they feel threatened by someone, they look for any excuse to keep them out. This way, they can keep on complaining that they don't have enough talent while claiming that they are trying to hire more.
There are plenty of mid-to-high level developers and managers in the Seattle area, Amazon just doesn't want them because then they would feel threatened.
