Status: currently unemployed with past experience at Google
Position: SDE on AWS Elemental MediaTailor team
Location: Portland, OR
Date of last interview: February 12, 2021

The entire interview process, from submitting my application to receiving word of the outcome, which included an online assessment, a phone screen, and 4 virtual "on site" interviews split over two consecutive days, took roughly 1.5 months (I received my rejection email today).

What I wanted to vent about regarding this experience was the somewhat dishonest interview approach of one interviewer in particular. (I suspect this interviewer was the "bar raiser," as he asked me "hard" level questions while the others only asked "medium" level questions.) Anyways, I first get asked Integer to English Words, which is ranked as "hard" but which I found to be rather doable when I first solved it on LeetCode. I recognized the problem as one I had seen before and so, in the spirit of being honest and transparent, let the interviewer know this. He then presents me with Trapping Rain Water (also a "hard" question), which for me is a much more difficult question than the preceding one since it requires one to make a clever observation, while the first problem requires little creativity and only good organization. Anyways, I proceed to describe an approach to solving the second problem which I realize long after the interview was completely wrong. And yet, during the interview, the interviewer prodded me along with my solution, seemingly encouraging me. In hindsight, I understand that he wanted to see whether or not I would discover my mistake independently, but I went into all of these interviews expecting a "collaborative" problem solving session as described by one of the recruiters. Thus, I feel like my honesty in informing the interviewer that I had seen the first question previously was not at all reciprocated in his interview approach. In fact, I could have very well concealed the fact that I had solved that first problem before and perhaps even benefited from it by receiving an offer, assuming that this interviewer's negative feedback was what did me in. Anyways, I hope this post to serve as a heads up to others preparing for their on-site interviews with Amazon.

P.S. The recruiter who briefed me before the on-site interviews also instructed me that only "medium" level questions will be asked during these interviews.