The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Amazon in Jun 2008
Interview
2 interview experiences: exp #1: phone interviewed w/ 2 people, onsite visit, job offered. Phone interview was mainly algo questions (no puzzles) and 1 offline coding. onsite was 3 algo interviers and 2-3 design discussion interviewers. I was interviewed for 2 positions so was told that I'll face extra people, I can't remember if I was double teamed at some parts.
Questions: I don't remember the algo questions, but I think they weren't too hard because I was able to solve them (I can't solve hard ones at interviews). 1. discuss how to design server(s) to handle large amounts of traffic across the world (large geographic/network space). 2. How do I feel about Java vs C++ (I remember this especially because during lunch a manager mentioned he felt c++ is "crisp" and I liked that description.)
It took Amazon a while to reimburse my travel expenses (I think 2-3 weeks, while other companies gave a check within 1 week). Because they want to you take taxi, I was waiting in their building exit for my cab ride to the airport when everybody is leaving work. A few people came and said bye to me, but I can't remember their names (actually I didn't even remember talking to them). So, not wanting to offend any interviewer, I just smiled at everybody existing.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Aug 2010
Interview
1st phone interview just happened and I got the 2nd confirmation. I was asked about Hashtable behavior and sorting methods, plus one practice of finding pairs in 2 given arrays. Interviewer is nice.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Aug 2010
Interview
It took quite some time (say six weeks) to get a response after I had submitted my resume, and the email came from a recruiter. The phone interview was for a position unrelated to the one for which I had submitted my resume.
Setting up the phone interview took a couple of emails and a phone call, and the software engineer from the team called me precisely on time. He spent about 30 minutes asking me questions and I spent about 20 minutes asking him questions.
The most technical questions were akin to:
* if you had to keep a list of numeric values, how would you search it for all pairs of values which add to a fixed value?
* give a back-of-the-envelope OO (class-level) design for a dictionary system
A respectable amount of time was spent asking me about a technical solution I was proud of or a great technical challenge I had overcome.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Show a class-level OO design for a dictionary service to be used by clients passing a complete document in for spell-checking.