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 college or university. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon in Feb 2014
Interview
The interviewers were very nice and helpful. Questions asked included:
- How to display a certain section of a list given the page number and # of items the user wants to display
- Data Structures and BST
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2014
Interview
For college students, an on-site group interview is likely, without any phone interviews.
I was contacted a few days after submitting an online application and resume, for an on-site interview later that month. All the interviewees were college students, both undergraduate and graduate.
Due to non-disclosure I cannot discuss questions, but it is already known that these group interviews split candidates into groups of 3, and allow them to each work on a portion of a problem. You are given a laptop, and a choice of languages, and several hours (roughly from 9:30am to 4:30pm) to provide the code for the solution.
During that time there were several interviewers who took us aside to ask us how we were solving the problem, first as a group, then as individuals. This part was closer to a standard interview: discuss the problem, things you fix, things you fail to fix, further work.
There was a tour in the morning, and a Q&A with employees at the end of the day.
Received an offer a few days later. Had 2 weeks to decide. Was given a choice of groups within the company to join.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Non-disclosure Agreement covers these questions.
Recommendation: fully outline your plan in comments before writing code. If you do not finish, or your code does not work correctly, there will be a record of what you intended.
Standard review of algorithms and data structures is good, but also practice writing, running, and testing code.