I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Sep 2014
Interview
Amazon's AWS group reached out to me through Linked In and asked for a call with the hiring director. I had heard a lot of strange things about Amazon but was intrigued so I took the call.
The initial call went well. The director answered my concerns and questions very honestly and was very straightforward.
The next contact was with an internal recruiter who setup a phone interview with team members. However, the recruiter did not tell me about it and it was sheer luck that I reached out to her to find out status the day before the interviews. We rescheduled to a day when I could make it.
The phone interviews went really well. The questions were not as bizarre as I had expected, mostly they focused on me providing specific examples of my experienced and how I handled them.
Next I was brought in for a day-long, in-person interview. This was preceded by an essay question where I wrote up how I had solved a complex problem.
I enjoyed the day with the team and thought we go along well. Again, the questions were looking for specific examples of things I had done. They focused a lot on the Amazon Leadership Principles (they warned me about this beforehand and had provided a link) and I felt like I provided good examples of those principles.
I was most impressed by their interest in failures and lessons learned.
They turned me down without explanation. I was very surprised by that since I thought we had connected really well and were a good fit.
Based on what they said during the interview, I think they have a deep cultural problem where they want more mid-to-high level employees, but they don't want to give up their feeling of being the smartest people in the room. So if they feel threatened by someone, they look for any excuse to keep them out. This way, they can keep on complaining that they don't have enough talent while claiming that they are trying to hire more.
There are plenty of mid-to-high level developers and managers in the Seattle area, Amazon just doesn't want them because then they would feel threatened.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Though I was interviewing for a manager role, it was for a technical team so I was asked to design a million-disk array alerting system. They seemed to be looking for my understanding of disk arrays and the complexities of alerts/managing of large systems.
Phone screen, 5 1 hour interviews for loop
Each hour was dedicated to 2 LPs. System design was more collaborative than i anticipated which was a pleasant surprise. The phone screen mostly focused on my previous experiences
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Standard LP based scenarios, system design was actual system the team owns
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Tokyo) in Feb 2026
Interview
The interview process is straightforward but intense.
First interview was with another Software Dev Manager in the same team. After that the famous loop interview where I had to take 5 interviews in a row over two days ( using paid holidays at work ). Recruiter gave a lot of information about possible questions and helped with materials. However, I had to use same stories few times as the different interviewers asked same questions few times.
Everything is okay, I had a good time during the interviews and it was a good exercise. However, I simply do not understand why they have to call to reject? I am not a customer to be obsessed with. A straight cut rejection via email works better than taking time out of my busy schedule.
If they used this time to share some feedback, that would be useful. If they do not share any reason why I have to continue formal small talk just to get the rejection on my face?
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A time you were driving toward a goal and realized more than halfway in that it may not be the best goal.
Had 1 round of System design interview. I thought the interview went ok, if not bad, it went decently well. Received a rejection response, while asking to apply 6 months later.
