I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (San Francisco, CA) in Jul 2010
Interview
45 minute phone screen describing related work experience. On-site interview consisted of five 45-minute interviews with a deep technical focus. Many coding and problem-solving questions were given. Difficulty increased to a fairly high level.
Areas included testing practices and testing experience, programming questions such as finding compiler errors, algorithm questions such as using hash tables, and design questions regarding client/server communication.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a client/server messaging protocol to facilitate a web-based spreadsheet program. What would the object model look like on the client side?
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.
