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 online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (San Francisco, CA) in Mar 2012
Interview
I applied on LinkedIn. Next day I got email from the recruiter to schedule initial phone screening. Two days later we have our first screening. She asked me about my current role and behavioral questions on deep analysis. She asked me to describe challenges faced. After the interview, she described their hiring process, that there will be 2 phone screening and everything goes well, 1 day of in-person interviews.
Next the hiring manager called. Again it was all about behavioral questions. Questions on how I manage priorities, things I proud of, project management skills etc.
Second phone screening was done by another development manager. It was technical in nature. He asked me to describe MVC pattern. Since it was very high level question, I took an example of shopping cart and explained what will go under each M, V and C. We went in discussion around my answer. Second question was about designing a file system. This one caught me little off guard. He had created a session on a some site where we could share the session. I had type the classes and methods as I designed. This could have been a big design exercise but with limitation on the time, we wrapped up. I wasn't sure whether I gave enough details.
2 days later, I got email asking me to come in for in-person interview. I had given full day's schedule, directions, lunch options etc. It was very well planned. From the schedule, I could tell that 2-3 interviews will be technical including the bar raiser and others will be more on my management style. At the end of the day, I knew that I had done pretty good on all of my interviews and was expecting an offer.
I got my final offer in hand 1 week later.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Addition and multiplication of two matrix containing millions of entries. Most of the values are zeros.
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.