2 recruiters contact me via linkedin, and I responded to one of them. Then had a short call with the recruiter via phone, and later he arranged a phone interview with the hiring manager. The phone interview with HM went pretty good, he asked most technical questions and I responded well enough that the HM mentioned they would bring me to a F2F interview ASAP. I went to their Cupertino office for the onsite after a business trip on a Friday, and Lab126 prepared all the hotel and flight booking for me. On-site was a common tech company style, I interviewed 5 or 6 people from different group, each one had about 45 minutes and also had a lunch with the HM. Interview was not hard, they are very interested in how my current employer doing design, and seemed it went pretty well again.
The HR lady promised that they will make a decision in a week.
One week later, she called and told me the feedback was very good, I would receive the official offer from email very soon.
Everything happened until that Friday was pretty professional, though there's a lot bad reviews about Lab126, I was going to ignore them all.
However, things happened after that date make me have NO desire to associate with this company for ever!
I was waiting to see the offer from the HR lady, however it never comes.... I was having tight communication with her, at the beginning she said the HM was having a emergency trip to China, so the offer would signed when he get back....
Two weeks later, she told me HM is back, just need a couple of days to finish the offer...
Another week past, she told me HM signed the offer, now waiting for the Sr. Director to sign....
One week later, she said they need a little more time ...
After that, the HR called maybe one or two times and then never heard back from her again. But, I was not expecting to receive it anyway and decided to accept another offer from another company...
After about 5 months of the interview (early 2015 by then), I received a call from the recruiter, he explained to me what happened - it was because Amazon hardware performed so bad in 2014, the top decided to frozen hiring. And, he told me they are planning the head count for 2015, and my position was 1st priority, he wanted to check if I still had interest - I answered I wanted to see the offer first. Interestingly enough, I noticed from his Linkedin profile that he left Amazon just 1 week after the call.... Of course, I never receive any updates since then.
Amazon Lab126 still owes me the travel reimbursement for the onsite, since my recruiter left and the HR lady was not responding, I don't think I will ever get that back....
Overall, Amazon is very unprofessional for hiring process, wasted me a lot of time, not even a company worth to talk to anymore. They are also having notoriously bad culture and bad reputation, I'm glad I did not receive the final piece at the end.