Developer applicants have rated the interview process at Amazon with 3.5 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 33% positive. To compare, the company-average is 63.8% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2011
Interview
I got a call from the Amazon guy. He asked me to join an online meeting and write a program to find factors of a number.
I asked him if there could be -ve numbers, he said no, but that is a good question. I wrote the program which worked fine and then he asked me to develop test cases.
After that he asked me basic questions about Data Structures mostly Hash Tables and collision resolution.
I was not selected even though the interview went well :(
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon in Feb 2011
Interview
Two slots interview, on campus. First one is about recursion and the further data structure question. Second is to generalize a function dealing with constant, set and array. I didn't think on the oo way so I did it poorly
I applied through other source. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon in Feb 2011
Interview
I was contacted by a recruiter and only had my phone interview 2 weeks later. I had to reschedule my interview, because they flaked on the first. The low life recruiters they hired there are very unresponsive and impossible to get a hold of.
First off, if you were contacted by the recruiter like I was, this is called fishing. These guys are fishing for the brightest minds in the country. Be prepared to answer some impossible questions. My uncle is a senior software engineer at Oracle, and even he laughed at some of the questions that were posted here on this website as interview questions. Basically, don't feel bad if don't pass the interview process. Amazon.com isn't what its cracked up to be. Besides, if you somehow squeak by the interviews and get hired, are you really going to be happy competing with Joe Blow, who codes for fun at home?
Get a life JOE!
Okay on to the questions:
These guys love the following topics: Binary Trees and Binary Search Trees, Searching Algorithms (Quick, Bubble, Merge, etc...), Hash Tables, Strings, and Algorithm Complexity. Know the differences between Java and C++. If you know the following topics inside and out, you should be golden. Just don't tell them your a crazy psychopath looking for your next victim and you should get that cube next to Joe. =)
Good luck.
If you haven't already looked for jobs at Intel, I suggest you do. Believe it or not, Intel does software too. I did an internship there over the summer. Awesome place to work. They don't put you through the ringer like these communists at Amazon.com do.
Calculate the trajectory of a satellite destined for asynchronous orbit if it was launched from Kennedy Space Center and its velocity and acceleration were proportional to the Bull S&*^ those first 2 questions were all about!