I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Egypt, NY) in Jan 2014
Interview
phone call then I went to proceed with 5 technical interviews and 1 HR interview
the process went well and they are so sweet people the technical interviews were pretty hard but this means they select the qualified people
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Apr 2015
Interview
The interview process was geared toward making me feel comfortable. First the interviewers would talk a bit about themselves and what they do at Amazon, followed by very open-ended questions about myself. After the initial open-ended questions, the interviewer would get into more specific topics and/or coding questions. The coding questions required writing close to syntactically correct code on a whiteboard, but the interviewers were OK with a bit of handwaving. The interviewers were also helpful in identifying issues with my solution in a way that kept my comfort level and confidence high. Overall it was a very positive experience.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Mar 2015
Interview
Yes, you read that right.. 180 days. First phone interview, interviewer never bothered to submit feedback to the system. Recruiter would contact and go dark for a month, contact and dark.. Finally another phone interview.
Was told I had to fly to Seattle for the on-site even though I live less than ten miles from the job location. I have to fly in the day before, so it takes me two days to do this interview. Also, I could not get a job description although I was told multiple teams were interested.
After the flight had been booked I finally get a job description and the required skill-set is nowhere near what my resume lists.. I go anyway because I had never been to Seattle, though I started to have my doubts about all of it.
Do the interview and everything goes ok. For dealing with technology so far out of my comfort zone I'd say I did pretty well overall. Lots of algorithm and cloud based questions. Aced a couple, did ok on some and got stuck on one.
Get a call the next day that the team decided to pass because of my lack of knowledge of their technology. Told the recruiter that I thought it was odd that I was brought in for this job in the first place and expected the team to understand that I had to learn on the job.. Get quite rudely told that "we hire on experience, not potential." and she tells me she'll call back in a year or so.
If you only hire on experience, why contact someone who has none of the skills listed that you are looking for? This turned into a giant waste of time for everyone involved because of some recruiter not doing their job.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Lots of algorithm questions straight out of careercup. Overall the interview was quite thorough and all bases were covered. I could not figure out who the 'bar raiser' was because none of the interviews stood out as particularly difficult.
What was interesting was that when I asked questions about cooperation and interaction with different groups, all interviewers replied in a way that i could see there was a lot of friction between departments. Having read the amazon reviews and the dreaded 'stack ranking' system they still employ, it was no real surprise to me.