I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2017
Interview
After a recruiter reaching out to me initially, I did two phone screens - one more technical in nature, and the other with situational questions. After those, I got invited to do an interview loop at an interview day. Did 4 back to back interviews between 9am and 1pm. Focus was primarily on situational questions, with one interview focusing on system design. After completing the loop, it took 4 business days to hear back that I had made it through the process. After that I had a few calls with different hiring managers about their teams and available positions, from which I got to pick which position I wanted to go with. All in all an excellent experience
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Can't give full detail (NDA) but expect lots of "tell me about a time you ... ", based on the Amazon leadership principles. For system design, expect to be asked about any one of many current highly available, highly scalable platforms, and how to implement key features of those.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2017
Interview
Phone call with Director. Went so well ,they skipped a follow up screen to fly me up. Before flying up was asked to write an 3-4 page essay. The first interviewer was 20 minutes late. Yeah, I sat waiting for 20 minutes. He didn't seem prepared and didn't take any notes on his laptop, asked me the questions but seemed to be checking his email.
Was taken to the wrong room then twice. Had someone interview me I could barely understand his English, but worked through it. Then to a video call with a Director from NY. I thought this was a test to see how I'd handle someone being extremely rude and off putting, because he was intolerable but I took it. This continued through the day.
At every point, I asked every interviewer their previous job, and background. Most had less experience than I did, maybe one was comparable and he was the Director. It all felt good, but honestly the vibe there was pretty bad. I know it's meant to be impartial but it isn't. Don't fool yourself.
So 1 week goes by, and I finally email them and get a "we said no but we can't say why". So, for a "customer driven company" to waste so much time of candidates and not way "why" is insulting our entire industry. And, further it's just not true. Former friends at Amazon say that is just a BS line and I agree. 2 years ago, I interviewed for a different role and had TWO follow up calls on the reasons why which were technical based.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time when....(you wasted a ton of time interviewing for a heartless company).
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2017
Interview
Mostly questions on scenarios and how I handled them. Questions on people development, project management, customer success, hiring and developing junior engineers, going across boundaries for customer success, everyone was very professional, only distraction during the interview was they were typing their feedback right during the interview and were quite apologetic.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Asked to explain one situation where I went against my management and did work and how i went back and convinced them on the positives.