The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Irvine, CA) in Sept 2011
Interview
Two phone screens, one behavorial, one technical. Technical phone screen was fairly easy. About a week later was contacted for 1:1 interview in person. Was a series of 5 interviews from morning until noon. Technical interviews were challenging and thought I did fairly well. Interviews will focus very much on designing and building web services at large scale. Be prepared to answer questions on performance, caching, database optimization, design of services, etc. Behavorial interviews and management interviews were fairly easy and straightforward. Received a followup from the recruiter the following week, indicating they were not going to make an offer. Asked for their reasoning they cited concerns about my technical ability. I was a bit surprised, but also realize that I was very nervous during the first technical interview which I think was probably the problem. Got to admit I'm disappointed.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a clone of a web-based note taking system. Design various services for that system.
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.
