I just had an interview with Amazon and wanted to get some opinions on my chances of getting an offer. The team seemed really interested in interviewing me after I had coffee with a hiring manager. They actually went straight to the on-site and scheduled it for two days later. All the interviews up until the last one felt really great. It was more LPs and talking through my experience than coding overall. The coding questions I came up with a good or optimal solution quickly and went straight to asking the interviewer questions. Each interviewer seemed very pleased with my LP responses, lots of smiling subtly while they typed and responses like "oh that'll be great data", or "that's perfect I was about to ask about this". The format of them furiously typing was a little odd, but I hear it's Amazony. The only issue was the very last interview. It was a high scalability architecture/database design question, which definitely isn't my forte. It felt like things didn't click with the interviewer and he was looking for something else while we talked through options and trade-offs. The vast majority of my experience is front end on Web, iOS and Android, which is what this role would be. It shows in my resume and I was pretty forthcoming up front that back-end architecture isn't my strong suit. What are the odds I receive an offer given this situation?
They might give you an offer but under level you if you didn't do as good in design interviews.
Have seen enough loops where BR was not inclined but candidate was hired. Everyoneβs combined experience with candidate does make a difference.
What were ur coding questions? How tough were they?
I want to respect the confidentially of their interview questions, but I will say that the Amazon list on LeetCode Premium was a good way to prepare.
Thats respectable! I was curious as you said your interviews were more LP than coding and what ever the coding questions were u were able to find a solution quickly. I have seen a huge variance across teams in interviews on the emphasizes of LP over coding. It took me 3 tries at Amazon and every loop was different in terms of difficulty of coding questions and the emphasizes they gave on asking LP question
It's a team discussion and debate in the debrief. They all compare notes. One poorer interview won't sink you usually. But Amazon us trained to create positive experience for all candidates, and still only like 1 in 3 get an offer. Lots of good advice in this thread.
Heard back from the recruiter today and got an offer! They went with L5 instead of L6, but gave me the higher end of the band, average of ~$225k TC across the 4 years. I think this was definitely fair as I thought I was borderline SDE II/III going in and I know they tend to down level.
Cool man! Im sde 2 too with average of 200k across 4 years. How many years total exp u got
~8 yoe in mostly startups with no degree. I've actually never even taken a CS course before. Just lots of hard work trying to learn everything I need to know to be successful.
If the bar raiser or hiring manager were your last interview you could be in trouble. They are the only ones that could swing a vote when everyone else liked you. A random team member not liking you wouldnβt change outcome if the HM and BR were on board.
I'm assuming the bar raiser was the interview before. She had by far the most experience at Amazon and she was the only person from a different department. She was also more precise about following the process and explained why she was taking notes. I felt like that one was great. The hiring manager was one of the first interviews and that one went well too. The technical question only took 5-10 minutes and he said you clearly understand the problem and the language features you can use it solve it simply.
That was the BR, correct. If the BR and HM like you, youβre pretty much in. I had loops recently where ONLY the BR was not inclined and...we didnβt proceed. They carry tons of weight and most have earned that authority and respect. Worst case, you get referred for another role. If you did well with the BR especially. Down-leveling is a possibility for anyoneβI went from principal to senior at Amazon, and that was a very fair decision they made. Let us know what happens!