I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Newark, NJ) in Jul 2019
Interview
I was initially approached by an AWS recruiter via LinkedIn, who encouraged me to pursue the TAM position, given that my background appeared as a great fit. I replied back to her with my availability for a phone screening.
Initial part of the process was extremely smooth; the recruiters were courteous, helpful, prompt and friendly.
Unfortunately, that impression was completely ruined by the person running the technical interview over the phone.
The technical screening went horribly. English is not my first language either, but the interviewer had such a heavy accent that made the conversation very difficult. I had to ask him to repeat many questions several times. He was talking over the speakerphone that complicated things even further. He was also distracted, appeared to be typing. There were a lot of awkward pauses on the interviewer’s side and the conversation did not seem to flow. There was a lot of microphone static noise and at some point I asked him to dial in via phone.
The Amazon Interviewers are like a BOT reading a script with a heavy accent. If you have a solid technical operations background in a major company, this position is not for you. If you answer something in depth that is beyond their understanding or out of the script they start with the next question.
Interview questions [13]
Question 1
Describe an instance when you had to make quick decision without having all the information.
Issue with 2-tier webapp with multiple servers and one database server. Customer says all web pages have been loading slow. What would you do to identify the problem?
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Zürich) in Sep 2023
Interview
Online assessment, technical interview, loop interview with 5 people using Chime. Loop interview was very tiring and many useless questions that don't allow you to represent yourself how you perform in the job at all. You can easily spot who is the BR because it's usually some guy/gal in aws since many years, and from a completely different team.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
All the useless LP questions
Technical deep dive (all questions that you can find here)
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Amazon in Oct 2022
Interview
Lengthy, exhausting and time consuming with no regards whatsoever for your time. Took them a couple of months to schedule the first phone interview. Then they slept on it for a few weeks where their portal said that this position had actually expired. Then to my surprise they actually came back asking for a full day of back to back meetings to interview and introduce me to their company's culture. What is the best way to introduce someone to a company's culture other than having 5 hours of back to back meetings? They call it the loop, but I have a better name for it. The Gauntlet! I got questioned for 5 hours in an interrogation style with silly questions where they expected me to parrot back their leadership principles while they have showed none of it! Such hypocrisy! I think I could had passed this interview if I didn't maintain my authenticity and just gave them the answers they want to hear. The whole experience felt Orwellian which explains why Amazon is becoming such a Kafkaesque company to work for given the stories I heard in the reviews. I've taken being rejected by their people as a validation! Also it turns out that this role is a mere glorified support engineer who is expected to be a jack of all trades but obviously a master of none!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe to me on time when you went above and beyond for a customer.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Amazon
Interview
Applied via referral followed by the standard process: Online Assessment -> Phone Screen -> Virtual Loop. All interviewers were friendly and made the experience positive. Recruiters replied promptly and kept me in the loop.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Phone Screen:
* Tell me about the time when you provided a simple solution to a complex problem.
* Layer 2 vs. Layer 3; Can be the data transferred without Layer 3?
* What is deduplication? DB deduplication?
* Describe a DNS walkthrough
* What are DNS record types? How recursive server knows about authoritative server? Whether changing CNAME changes the original record?
* How to diagnose high load on Linux server?
* What is data warehouse?
* Analytics and Hadoop.
* What is the difference between supervised and unsupervised ML?
* What is the difference between SQL and No-SQL? Usage of each?
* What is the difference between compiled and interpretive languages? Examples of when each can be used?
* What is the difference between VM and containerization?
* What is CDN and how it knows to update the content?
Loop:
* Tell me about the time when you provided a solution only by asking questions?
* Build and troubleshoot various issues with 3-tier web application.
* Tell me about when you led an activity and what was the outcome?