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After applying at Amazon India through different means and not hearing back from them, I one day randomly applied at Amazon Germany for frontend role directly in the career section and luckily my resume got shortlisted.
Note:- As I have signed an NDA, I cannot share the exact questions.
I received the email regarding the shortlist and was asked to fill availability for the phone screen.
1st round : Phone Interview.
It was scheduled on 14th June and I had a general discussion with the technical recruiter regarding what I do on a day to day basis followed by a behavioral question and after that he asked me if I was willing to relocate and what are my salary expectations, etc.
He said that your final interview will be scheduled only after your second round goes well.
2nd round: Phone screen with Manager.
The second round was on 2nd July and it was taken by the manager. He asked me to create a web component followed by lots of questions and changes and one CSS styling question. At the end there was a behavioral question.
After that he said will you relocate or work from India?. We are looking for a team member to join us here.
3rd & Final round
It was composed of 5 technical rounds to be done on a single day. The decided date was 28th of July.
I was very nervous before this as I knew I am not well prepared.
3.a:- OOPs (Backend engineer with 9+ years of experience) (same team).
We had a formal introduction followed by one behavioral question and then an oops question, In the end there were two more behavioral questions.
The implementation had to be scalable, otherwise it does not meets the criteria of the question.
This round did not go well because I haven’t prepared for OOPS.
My confidence took a toll.
3.b:- Frontend (Frontend engineer 5+ years of experience) (same team).
I was asked to create a component, followed by lots of questions on accessibility, styling, events, etc.
In the end 3 behavioral questions.
Finished this round in half an hour, It went superb. Boosted my confidence.
3.c:- Cultural fit (BI data engineer) (different team).
Taken by an external team member for unbiased opinion. Solely based on behavioral questions, 6 of them.
All were very different, Had to think about everything I have done in my past experiences and then answer it.
It went okay.
3.d:- Managerial (System design) (same team).
He said let’s start by answering your questions first and then move forward. After that he asked me to implement a frontend system.
Discussed the following points
- Layout
- Styling
- Accessibility
- Performance
- Tracking user activity
- Recommendations
- Preferences
Followed by 3 behavioral questions.
This round went nice, the manager seemed to be happy.
3.e:- DSA (FullStack engineer) (Sister team).
Was asked to implement a two way algorithm based on trees. Tree to HTML and HTML to Tree parser with lots of constraints.
Which tree will you choose, why?. How to differentiate nodes and text, etc.
Followed by 3 behavioral questions.
This round did not go well, I had tough time understanding the question. After 1st implementation, the interviewer said there is some misunderstanding and explained the question again and asked me to re-implement the solution.
After second implementation, he asked me to implement the second parser (vice versa).
Verdict.
NOT SELECTED.
The recruiter called me next day and personally gave the feedback, he said there a lots of strong points and push but the team thinks that you need some improvements majorly on writing scalable and maintainable code.
The recruiter had already told me to go through leadership principles and STAR technique because you will be grilled a lot on that.
I was already hesitant that I won’t be able to make it. Still I did my best.
My strength
- Frontend components.
- System design.
My weakness
- OOPs
- DSA
- Behavioral questions.
I have noted where I have to improve and will work on it.
Long way to go. Life long learning. Keep Hustling 🤞.
PS:- I have 5 more interview experiences which I will share in the coming weeks.
Oldest comments (23)
It is great that you have shared this story, not everyone do this and these are the actual accounts which we should learn from ✌️
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this.
This post has enabled me to see what I myself need to learn in order to progress further.
I do have a question, may I please how scalability of a code written for Frontend judged? Like, optimising the Image sizes? Preloading the fonts? Code Splitting?
I shall be looking forward to hearing from you.
More than that.
Lets take a simple example.
You are asked to create a simple button component in React.
You created a simple button component.
Now the interviews wants different variations of button. You update the code again.
Now the interviewer wants to add different states to button. On hover different color, On click different color, on once clicked different color. on double click different color.
Now the interviewer wants you to create a group of button that have array of functionality.
So as he is asking you to do things, you are updating the code. Your approach should be to clarify these questions in the beginning and then create the component.
Now look at a bigger picture.
Your asked to create a new web app that will go along with facebook.
How would you create it.
Will it be separate application or goes along with the existing (integratable, injectable).
You should develop it is a widget and micro-frontend approach. If it is not integrated with existing app, it should force authenticate, otherwise bypass.
These are the minute details they look.
There are various things around it and one should question it, that is what they are looking for.
Now the question is how is it scaling?.
It is scaling feature wise, not optimization or speed wise.
Hope you got it.
Ahh, I see. Thank you for explaining the same. I actually considered scaling as in scaling performance wise.
Ah, yes, the Amazon interview process. A slog of a process which involves hazing candidates to weed out those who won't study to prepare specifically for Amazon.
Don't take it to heart that you weren't accepted - probably for the best!
Everything happens for good. I believe in this.
To anyone interested into making it at Amazon, one piece of advice: read the book 'Working backwards'.
This book details a number of scalable processes used within Amazon. A whole chapter is dedicated to the so-called 'bar-raiser', the process applied to hire new employees. Understanding that process will give you a good idea of how they will assess you, which in turn will make you more confident (and hopefully just as honest) in your interviews.
Besides the valuable information in that regard, there are plenty of other interesting topics. I found it an excellent read altogether and most certainly one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read!
Honestly, probably for the best. Amazon work culture sucks. Yeah, it would be great to have gotten out of India with such a big company, but you just keep trying and keep going and you will get there (probably with some other company). Thanks for sharing this with us.
What a very cool experience . I hope that you will get the job next time
I already got a good job. Thank you though.
Congratulations. Thanks for sharing this
Thanks for this great post. A question I have is didn't the interviewers ask to see your side projects, I feel like some of these questions asked could have been answered by just taking a look at your projects or aren't side projects a thing in interviews anymore?
No. They are more interested in the approach than the projects.
Yes, you can do DSA in any programming language of your choice.
Will it be possible for you to share the clauses of NDA Perhaps just the way you have shared the experience here.
Hi again, if I may ask how long did it take for amazon to send you the shortlist email from the day you applied?
Within a week.
Thanks!
Hey @learnersbucket , thanks for the post. It would be great if you can explain what was the question in OOP's round ? As a frontend engineer what we need to prepare and take care for this round?
Is this round was more of asking and giving answer or technical coding based ?
I was asked to design the Parking system, with three different car types, small->medium->large.
Small can fit in medium and large space and Medium can fit in large space.
Multiple floors of parking.
okay go it. So it's more of System Design round kind of ? correct if i understood wrong.
No coding?
can we do coding rounds of oops, lld, hld in Javascript. does interviewers prefer coding in Javascript?