The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2011
Interview
I was in one room for 6 hours and had 5 1 on 1 interviews. The recruiter changed the interview dates and sent me to a building that was not on their directory. Thanks to the mix-up I was late, I'm sure this was a mark against me.
The five people who interviewed me were nice enough. I have a feeling they weren't really interested in interviewing me as they all seemed kind of checked out throughout the whole process. Lots of brain teasers. Lots of questions on Sorting and Hashing. QuckSorts and HeapSorts. I got the feeling that my answers were correct and good enough but they had already decided on their candidate.
The impression I left was not favorable due to the issues getting to the interview and the overall atmosphere- lots of for-show security around the buildings, high on image, low on substance.
Final impressions: everyone I spoke with was very smart and very nice but at the end of the day they seemed less than the sum of their parts which is unfortunate- I can envision each one of them doing something more fulfilling.
Interview by recuriter, Phone interview over Chime with one easy Leet code problem and 2 behavioral questions. Although the interviewer was very casual at the start of the conversation, it quickly changed into behavioral questions at the start.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Encoding optimization algorithm and talk about a project you did recently.
First round is just leet code coding which screens through AI before going into live coding. Pretty simple and straighforward. Not too tough. Recruiter walks through it pretty nicely. Not sure how many rounds there are exactly
After submitting my application for the Software Engineer position, I received an invitation to complete an automated Online Assessment (OA). The assessment consisted of standard coding challenges, primarily focusing on algorithmic and data structure problems. Unfortunately, a few days after submitting my solutions for the assessment, I received an email informing me that I would not be moving forward in the interview process and was rejected.