Amazon onsite experience
Guys I recently gave Amazon onsite and for strange reasons the focus of all interviews were design n leadership principles. I total had five interviews and at the end of every interview I was expecting here comes the tough coding interview guy. But i only have three coding questions which were super easy than online assessment test. This interview experience was totally strange to me and i did very well except at few places interviewers helped me. Any insights and thoughts on such type of onsite experience? Is it normal?? What i heard is that Amazon ask tough coding questions, so i was super thrilled for that.
Had the exact same experience. Only one coding question, two design and the rest were the same leadership principles questions over and over again
OP what team in Amazon?
Same experience here. Got an offer. Didn't accept because I don't want to go to a company with a hiring bar consisting of how well you answer leadership principle questions
I disagree with the sentiment here. Technical ability is actually easy to assess if the interviewer is much more technically competent than the person being interviewed. I've participated in several technical phone screens and its immediately obvious who is good and who is not. Assuming you meet the basic technical competencies, it's much more important to know if you're the type of person that's hungry to make an impact and work hard. Those people will succeed regardless of whether or not they learned the perfect technical stuff in school or not, because they're life-long self learners. Amazon also requires a lot of personal ownership if you're going to succeed, especially when it comes to the promotion process, so a cultural fit is very important. Amazon culture is not for everyone, and a bad fit could mean that person is miserable. It happens to be a great fit for me and I'm thriving.
They usually try to see how you fit in Leadership principal in your last Job. Every time candidate starts explaining the situation it’s more than enough for interviewer to gauge how much technical exp candidate has ...... I have seen people getting rejections even though they felt it’s pretty straight forward interview. They know very well what they r looking for ..... So if u get an offer from FB or Google than it’s different story u shd go for it...
I interviewed at amazon thrice and got in on my third attempt. I think it depends very much on the team. My first interview was very similar to urs and i interviewed at amazon kindle. Second interview was with amazon devices and they asked coding questions but the questions were more abstract, design oriented then being analytical data structure type. My third interview in the retail team was a pleasant surprise, as all my interviewers asked me a question which was very algorithmic such as those asked at Google, and my interview loop was of 5 interviewers instead of 4. One interviewer was assigned to only drill me in leadership, while the rest 4 asked me only coding questions.
What types of leadership questions were there?
Did you get an offer OP?
This much is more than enough, usually during behavioral questions they try to to grill on your projects. If they didn’t asked you tough questions or cross questioned your answers that means you haven’t provided all answers in STAR format.
That's actually very normal. It's the Amazon Behavioral interview gauntlet. Once you start, it'll make sense when none of your colleagues are good technically only politically.
Thats not good then i dont want to go in such company, but lets see how was the feedback?
Fibonappy is spot on. Tons of politics