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.
The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Jan 2012
Interview
Their interview process consists of two phone interviews and an in-house interview that consists of 4-7 45 minute-1 hour interviews.
For my first phone interview, the interviewer was very friendly and prompt. He called on time, explained the process and got right into the questions. For my 2nd phone interview, the guy calling me was a last minute replacement, and it showed. He was about 10 minutes late to call, sounded like he wasn't prepared and generally didn't care about the interview. I was lucky that I made it past that call... Both interviewers allowed me to ask questions for about 5 or 10 minutes after the technical questions they had.
The in house interview began at 11 and lasted until about 4:30, shorter than I was expecting. Everyone was very friendly and I really didn't feel intimidated at all. It went very well, but I didn't receive an offer.
The biggest downside to Amazon's interview process is that they don't give you feedback on why you don't receive an offer. I thought I had a very good interview, but didn't get an offer.
From what I have heard, they have a 1-2 year span after "failing" an interview that you cannot apply again to Amazon, but I was told that the result of my interview didn't prohibit me from applying to other positions. I wasn't sure how to read into that (and the recruiter was not helpful with that).
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
Phone interview 1:
1. Describe what a hash map/table is. Later evolved into how to deal with collisions.
2. Write the code to take an int array and return a new int array whose value at i is the product of all values in the input array except the value at i.
Phone Interview 2:
1. Count the number of words in a sentence.
After more definition, the problem evolved into:
Code a function that will take a String and return the number of words (continuous sequences of non white-space characters).
2. How would you model a restaurant reservation system?
In-House interview:
1. Given two int arrays, return a third int array that contains all values in the first int array that aren't in the 2nd. If a value is duplicated in the first int array, only return it once in the output array.
2. Model a deck of cards
In-house Interview
1. Write a program to print all combinations of ascending numbers that equal an input number.
2. Given a million points on a graph, return the 100 closest to the origin
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.