I applied through an employee referral. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Nov 2012
Interview
I had two phone interviews. Those went really well and the interviewers were pretty friendly. I had a little bit of trouble understanding the second interviewer who had an thick accent. But highly knowledgeable and gave me fun program to solve. After the initials phone screening the recruiters coordinated with me with flight tickets and hotel arrangements in Seattle, Wa.
The on site interview was not pleasant for me. The reason for that was I was very tired after a six hours flight cross country. When I reached Seattle, WA I could not sleep that night with a little bit of nerves and expectation. I really wanted the job but after the lunch my interview went into a downward spiral and the last interview I think I totally flunked and wasted the interviewer's time which was the most important as he mentioned he was from outside the group that I was being interviewed for (Or so called Amazon's Bar raiser).
Overall people are so friendly and the problems are not difficult. You can solve them with your eyes closed given time and in an relaxed environment. But if you succumb to pressure and easily stressed things can go wrong and will go wrong as I found out.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Nothing was too difficult, just usual data structure/Algorithms and fundamental CS stuff. I have written no disclosure agreement so can't disclose anything here. But every one looking forward to work there must emphasis on recursion and Tree structure.
Interview by recuriter, Phone interview over Chime with one easy Leet code problem and 2 behavioral questions. Although the interviewer was very casual at the start of the conversation, it quickly changed into behavioral questions at the start.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Encoding optimization algorithm and talk about a project you did recently.
First round is just leet code coding which screens through AI before going into live coding. Pretty simple and straighforward. Not too tough. Recruiter walks through it pretty nicely. Not sure how many rounds there are exactly
After submitting my application for the Software Engineer position, I received an invitation to complete an automated Online Assessment (OA). The assessment consisted of standard coding challenges, primarily focusing on algorithmic and data structure problems. Unfortunately, a few days after submitting my solutions for the assessment, I received an email informing me that I would not be moving forward in the interview process and was rejected.