I applied online. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2013
Interview
Started with two phone interviews, mostly algorithmic questions plus one design question. Then an onsite interview with 4 member of the team I would join in addition to one outsider.
I did well on the interviews. For a couple of them I finished the main question quickly and the interviewer had to come up with additional questions for the remaining time.
However, later the recruiter called me and asked about my visa sponsorship requirement and export control license (I needed both). Finally I was told that Amazon has recently decided not to hire nationals of certain countries (including Iran) because it provides cloud services to the government. So unfortunately I couldn't get the job.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
Um teste de código online, se aprovado, vai para o loop. O loop é 4 entrevistas seguidas, duas em inglês e duas em português. 3 entrevistas técnicas de código, todas as 4 têm pergunta de liderança.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Pergunta historicas baseada nos principios de lideranca da amazon.
