I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2016
Interview
No phone conversation with recruiter. No recruiter contact at the beginning or end of the interview. Had one informational interview via phone. Had one phone screen via phone, had one in-person with 5 interviewers over 5 hours. The interviews focused solely on behavioral questions. Between all 6, none ever accepted my answers at face value and continued to dig and probe, always repeating what I said, but incorrectly, and asking me to elaborate again. It was almost as if they were intentionally repeating it wrong in order to elicit a reaction. I was not asked a single coding question. I was asked if I was familiar with the product, to which I answered in the affirmative, but there was no probing.into what I had done with it. I got the impression that if I knew nothing about it, it would not have mattered. As of this writing, I am still waiting to hear back. I also had to write a 4 page report detailing the invention I was most proud of.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about the worst employee you ever hired
Tell me about the best employee you ever hired
Tell me how you would approach development of a greenfield project where all the work as an open slate, and you had a list of features to be delivered in 6 months
Tell me about a project you started where halfway through, you realized you made the wrong decision
Tell me about a time when one of your employees did something you disagreed with.
Tell us about a time when you had to work through multiple layers in an organization.
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.
