Hello blinders, I went to the famous Doppler building in Seattle for my onsite. After 4 back to back interviews, had lunch another team member and then had the last interview with the hiring manager. Every interview started with LP questions. 1. Object oriented, didn’t do great. 2. System design, went well. 3. Coding, was okay 4. Coding (bar raiser), went amazing 5. behavioural, was exhausted till then but still went good. The weird part was that second interview had 2 interviewers (person A and B. A was suppose to take the interview, B wasn’t on the list) both kept asking LP questions one after another. B kept asking counter questions and kept making weird faces at me when I was answering. B kept denying whatever I was saying about my own projects. B interrupted A as well so many times that it was frustrating. Still I answered the LP questions and the system design questions they asked. The third interview was a different experience as well. After discussing LPs, interviewer asked me a LC hard coding question (couldn’t find it anywhere), I discussed my approach and few other things. But before I could start working on it, he changed the question. Went on to talk about this new question for 15 mins. And then says, “okay, we have very less time left. Please finish the code for the first question.” I was like seriously??!🙄 but i still wrote the code and couldn’t finish it coz time was up. This was my first time interviewing for Amazon but yeah it shook me the way these two individuals handled the interviews. But I still expected an offer coz the Bar raiser interview went awesome. But I got a reject.
How do you know who is the bar raiser
He didn’t know the lunch buddy. And lunch buddy also confirmed that he was the bar raiser. I was so happy that I cracked the bar raiser. But i guess to get into Amazon (maybe that team) you have to be perfect!
Bar raisers will almost always change their vote if the rest of the loop is disinclined (it can go in the other direction, as well). They're more there to build consensus than to dictate the outcome on their own.
You dodged a bullet. I was in the same position as you a few month ago. Bar raiser went good, hiring manager system design good, aced a coding round, then two junior dev decided to give a LC hard style question. Got a reject but after a month I got offers from Uber, Indeed, Wework.
I had the same experience at Amazon. I was honestly shocked by this. I had two interviewers in one round. One guy came late that too and when there was 15 mins remaining, he asked me to implement LFU cache. I could tell from his face that he expected me to fold. But I told him the approach and coded the main function to manage increments in frequency. But still he was like something is wrong there! He gave me 15 mins and I'm pretty sure I was right. It was the bar raiser round as well. I knew then and there that he decided to fail me no matter what I did. And I got a reject as expected. I don't think I want to interview with Amazon anytime soon.
Even if you pass all rounds, downlevel happens frequently. no idea why.
Because internal promotions at amazon are so rare. They placate their employees by down leveling candidates.
WTF, this sounds horrible. Amazon is actually repulsing top performers. I could handle the artificial stress (had years of the real deal), and solve their LC questions, and memorize their LP BS, and never end up on a pip list, but why on earth would I want to deal with this bull 💩? I don’t, so I’ll never apply.
What team was it for?
Kindle Alexa.