Amazon Interview, Round II

Finally found some time to write about my second interview with Amazon, which was in Melbourne. I had a few weeks for preparation so I spent as much as I could for data structures and algorithms and writing code on a whiteboard not in an IDE on my PC. Everything was going well and after a while I was confident enough to write code on a paper or a whiteboard with the least number of mistakes. The other things I tried to review again were Design Patterns and OOP concepts, to make sure I can explain them with the right words (regardless of how much I have used them I just wanted to be sure I have no problem to explain them properly). I have to say I studied so hard and my focus was just to pass this, no other result in my mind.

The time finally came and the interview started, which included 4 separate interviews, about 45 mins each. Interviewers were from different teams and everyone was asking an absolutely different question, not necessarily coding ones. As I could see they wanted to know how you think, how is your approach to solve an issue, so you need to be A. relevant B. quick C. get focused to answer just the question.

Actually, I think I was off the track in answering one of the questions and also didn't do well when answering one of the coding questions. In fact, I have to say don't expect to see the usual coding or software development questions which you might have read about on different web sites or in interview books as so-called "Amazon interview questions", actually depending on interviewers (and obviously team they are managing or work with) you might end up with some strange questions which seem have nothing to do with software development at all (e.g. Math-based ones or questions with ambiguous answers which you need to handle when answering them).


This time I was not lucky enough to get the offer, although I had no doubt before the interview (and to be honest, after that) I can simply pass it with nothing but success. Now all I can say to you if you are preparing for on-site Amazon interview is to know the teams you are going to have interview with very well and focus on how their systems work, what they are dealing with in a day-to-day job and also check the interviewers background to somehow guess the type of questions they might ask. This is all apart from usual coding preparations you should do before the interviews. At the end I think it can be helpful for the people on the same boat as I was to list the books I tried to study for my preparation for the interview:

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Last not least, check GlassDoor.com to see how other people experience with Amazon interview process was and also how the current employees think about the company:



Good luck with your interview, this is a big challenge.
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