The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2011
Interview
I was initially contacted by a recruiter who found my resume from my college's career management center. The process was very quick, I was flown to Seattle with all expenses covered. All of the interview logistics were very streamlined and I was impressed with everything in that regard. As for the interview process itself, it was quite stressful. The process consisted of 4 back to back technical interviews. Every question I was asked involved coding the solution on a whiteboard. The questions focused exclusively on data structures and algorithms. I wasn't asked any trivia type questions like "What is OOP?" or "Explain garbage collection in Java". My advice would be to make sure you are keen on algorithm questions, and to prepare at least a month in advance.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
Um teste de código online, se aprovado, vai para o loop. O loop é 4 entrevistas seguidas, duas em inglês e duas em português. 3 entrevistas técnicas de código, todas as 4 têm pergunta de liderança.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Pergunta historicas baseada nos principios de lideranca da amazon.
