I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Amazon (New York, NY) in Jul 2021
Interview
A recruiter reached out about a few opportunities. I was interested in one of the opportunities, so the recruiter set up an interview with the Research Lead.
I had an initial call with the recruiter, where he told me about the position and explained what the interview process would look like. Unfortunately, the actual interview was NOTHING like the recruited said. The interview was literally 60 minutes of behavioral questions, with no time left at the end for me to ask questions.
I received an email the next say stating that I didn't get the job and it was against Amazon policy to tell me why.
Looking back, I'm relieved I declined the offer, despite the intense experience. The interview process felt overwhelming, starting with some tough core ML concepts before diving into the LLM fundamentals. During the technical round, I recognized a tokenization question from a PracHub session I had done just a week before. It felt like a small win in an otherwise challenging interview. Ultimately, the pressure and expectations were high, but I felt it wasn't the right fit for me.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
LLM fundamentals: tokenization design and KL-regularized SFT
There are three rounds in total. The process begins with a coding round, followed by the main interview loop, where you will meet the team and discuss technical skills, experience, and fit.
First round is fun, second round, which is also the final round involved 5 sessions, with different focus. For some sessions, not be able to present my story completely, time was tight, and interviewers were rushing.