I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (New York, NY) in Jun 2018
Interview
The interview was totally bizarre. I was asked to, on the spot, pitch a picture sharing app to venture capitalists 12 years IN THE PAST. So not only was I asked to pull together a coherent story in a matter of seconds (for which someone would normally have weeks or months to do) but I also had to time travel. Then I was asked to form a team as well as make technology decisions. My knowledge of the state of the art technology circa 2006 is a little rusty, so it didn't go well. Also, when I asked about work-life balance I was told "well you know, they say 50 is the new 40". That told me everything I needed to know. I will not be pursuing roles at Amazon anytime soon.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Pitch a picture sharing startup 12 years in the past.
I applied online. The process took 5 days. I interviewed at Amazon (Austin, TX) in Apr 2018
Interview
I was contacted directly by Amazon recruiting team. However, it wasn't for a TPM position I had applied for. I was directed to apply for this position and take the interview. Probably not a very prudent decision as the role wasn't lining up with my background. But as this was the first contact from Amazon I just went with it. My background is in DW/BI and Analytics and this role was for the team that maintains internal developer tools for AWS.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
How would you go about designing a system that keeps track of the last 10 items that a customer has browsed on Amazon. What would be the components involved.
Follow up questions were around what the API design should look like? And how would you handle multiple profiles for the same person across different countries? How would you be able to differentiate between different people logging on from say the same household.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Amazon
Interview
Was contacted by recruiter via email to interview for position. Was asked to provide a few days and time of availability. I was then asked to provide more days and times a couple weeks out. I provided additional dates and was then sent another email with day and time and name of person that will be conducting initial phone interview. I was told that it will primarily focus on technical abilities and to familiarize myself with AWS, review keynote speakers (each were 2+ hours long), STAR method and leadership principles.
I spent time walking through different scenarios and applying STAR method of different business scenarios in anticipation of the interview. I watched key note speakers from reinvent conference and became familiar with the AWS service offerings. I received confirmation Friday before Tuesday's interview and continued to prepare. They called the pre-arranged numbers (my cell phone) right at the interview time. The caller was from HR , not from the hiring manager. It was to inform me that the hiring manager wasn't going to conduct an interview. Sorry, not sorry.
I do appreciate that HR called to let me know. It would have been helpful to let me know prior to the interview so I didn't arrange my day around the appointment. I had read enough interview comments so wasn't surprised by the lack of respect they display for people's time.
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