I'm here to share my interview experience with Amazon. I applied for this role at Amazon last year in July. The process was extremly slow. Slow to the point that I had my onsite a few weeks ago!
Anyways the experience I had interviewing with Amazon was extremly subpar & lacked total & utter professionalism!
Phone Screen:
I was invited for phone screen interview. The interview was conducted virtually. The engineer taking the interview was extremly professional & knowledgable person. I cleared the interview & got an invitation for virtual onsite.
Here's when the entire professionalism starts to fall apart.
For background, I'm a mobile first SWE. I've also been working with web dev for more than a year now & I wanted to ask the type of System Design interview I'd be given during virtual onsite.
Virtual Onsite:
I get an email for scheduling onsite which I asked to schedule a month after my phone screen. I get the invitation for the virtual onsite. I had a question later on regarding virtual onsite that I tried to ask via email. My recruiter NEVER RESPONDED!
Month goes by & I get an email from the recruitment coordinator regarding the upcoming virtual onsite 2 DAYS before my onsite. I mentioned my question regarding the type of System Design interview wasn't answered since I wasn't sure if it's going to be product based or system design based interview. He apologized for the incompetency of my recruiter and told me that because of this mistake on their end they'll reschudle the interview for a month later.
Onsite day arrives & I had 4 back to back interviews.
- System Design
- Hiring Manager
- 2 Coding rounds
The system design guy was cool. He was friendly & we started the interview. 30+ minutes go by but we're still just talking about the Leadership principals! After like 35 minutes or so, I was asked to start the system design. I had 20 minutes to draw, explain, design API & answer followup questions for the system design.
Somehow I managed to do it but we ran out of time but the interviewer seemed satisfied.
Hiring Manager rounds comes along. This was the LEAST enjoyable interview so far. The guy was literally grumpy. He had no smile or expressions on his face.
He right away asks me about my biggest mistake & failure in my carrier. I mean NO GREETINGS, no hello hi. He just sta+rted with asking the NEGATIVE question. It caught me off guard since usually interviews are started on a positive note.
Anyways this guy kept asking me leadership principal questions. The internet connection that the guy had was also shaky but somehow we managed to get through the interview.
Coding rounds were the standard coding questions. We kept talking about leadership principals for good 30+ minutes and I was left with 15-20 minutes for writing actual code.
RESULTS:
After my interview, I didn't receive any email about when to expect the results. I knew it'll take 2-5 days after onsite but my recruiter didn't email me about it or about anything after onsites.
I sent them a couple of emails 2 weeks after my interview but still didn't hear back. Disgruntled by being ghosted, I contacted a Recruitment Coordinator online & managed to get some info from them. I learned I cleared the onsite.
I eventually refused the offer! I'd not want to work with such unprofessional company.
To make matters worse, I had read online several times that they don't even provide feedback if someone gets rejected! I mean how come someone can improve something if they don't know about the stuff they didn't "do according to Amazon's requirements".
Verdict:
All in all, the interview experience at Amazon is by far the worst. The recruiter doesn't respond & ghost you!! The interviewers you get is a lottery ticket. The phone screen interviewer was fun to work with but rest of the interviewers for onsite were okish. The hiring manager was the WORST! The guy acted as if he's full of himself.
Would I've interviewed at Amazon knowing the things I learned now? No. If they contact me, I might give it a try but I wont be preparing & spending lots of time for it. However I won't bother applying myself at Amazon not after the unprofessional experiences I've had.
Amazon is big so the experiences other have might be different but the overall verdict about Amazon online even on media articles is that they expect alot from you but this relation doesn't extend in both directions.
FAANG is overrated & these companies are well aware of it therefore it's a wild wild west when it comes to interviewing at FAANG. I interviewed at some non FAANG companies & they offered more compensation than FAANG which FAANG used to be famous for.
Parting Words:
Don't waste your time preparing for FAANG. There are alot of people in pipeline. FAANG market is already super saturated & they're no longer the highest payer or prestigious companies as they were. Companies like DoorDash, Robinhood, Snap or other non FAANG will probably be the best use of your time.
Don't get disheartened if you don't make it. I know everyone says that here. But the point is invest your time interviewing at companies that care about their candidates & treat the interviewees with professionalism & respect.