Software Engineer 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.
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I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Amazon in Jan 2013
Interview
Got contacted by a recruiter. They seemed interested in my background in computer vision and machine learning. They had me do a small programming exercise over the phone. Then I went in for an in person interview. It was frustrating because they could not say anything about what I would be working on, other than I was a great match.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon in Apr 2011
Interview
Responded to a posted job with my reume and cover letter. Had a scheduled phone interview which was casual discussion of my background and accomplishments. Was flown out for face to face interview where I met with team members 1 at a time for aprox 1 hour technical interviews where I was given design problems and technical Java questions like demonstrate the use of threads and queues. Finally interviewed with manager and was challenged with open ended qestions to answer with as much as I could provide for ideas and direction.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The difficult part for me was the psychological pressure that was used threw me off my game. Just remember they would not be interviewing you if they did not want to hire you. Its ok not to have all the answers .. you will be part of the team :)
Amazon came to my university and interviewed many of us back to back in a reserved room. Had to sign NDA before interview. Was asked to introduce self, and went straight into algorithm questions given a piece of note paper to explain. Interview kept looking at phone, but explained he was checking the time.