Amazon

Software Engineer (Internship) Interview Experience - Seattle, Washington

January 15, 2024

Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

70 mins OA. Two coding questions:

First, two players play a game. The question asks for the best strategy where everyone gets the best score. You can just sort the array and get the max value one by one. I forgot the second one.

In the end, there were also some working style questions.

Questions

Very easy question. Ask you to sort the array and get the max value by one by one.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 93 interview experiences for the Amazon Software Engineer (Internship) role in Seattle, Washington.

Success Rate

32%

Pass Rate

Amazon's interview process for their Software Engineer (Internship) roles in Seattle, Washington is fairly selective, failing a large portion of engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive57%

Neutral32%

Negative11%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Amazon's Software Engineer (Internship) interview process in Seattle, Washington.

Amazon Work Experiences

Not what I was expecting

Software Development Manager III • Former Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Very talented and professional engineers. Interesting problems to solve. Good relocation and hiring bonus, decent base salary. It will be a learning experience, no matter what your background is. Strong company culture and good team spirit.

Cons: The high hiring bar and mandatory layoffs every year make it hard to keep your team fully staffed. You will spend a lot of time recruiting. Management is distrusting by nature, and playing devil's advocate seems to be a corporate pastime. Expect strictly negative reinforcement and to hear that you are not doing good enough. Being a bully is considered a value and a requirement for advancement.

Not what I was expecting

Software Development Manager III • Former Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Very talented and professional engineers. Interesting problems to solve. Good relocation and hiring bonus, decent base salary. It will be a learning experience, no matter what your background is. Strong company culture and good team spirit.

Cons: The high hiring bar and mandatory layoffs every year make it hard to keep your team fully staffed. You will spend a lot of time recruiting. Management is distrusting by nature, and playing devil's advocate seems to be a corporate pastime. Expect strictly negative reinforcement and to hear that you are not doing good enough. Being a bully is considered a value and a requirement for advancement.

Very good place to work, if you are willing to commit yourself

Principal Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

August 16, 2008

Pros: High quality and dedication of employees. Interesting and challenging technical problems: scale and (application) complexity. Cooperative working environment; not excessively political. Amazon still has a lot of new things left to do. Frugality is taken seriously: the work's the thing. Totally. Seattle is a great place to live.

Cons: Difficulty being able to leap-frog the state of the art. On-call can be very draining. Compensation is only average (but at least it seems to be average). Benefits aren't stellar. "It's still day one" gets tiresome. Frugality is taken pretty seriously: no frills (i.e. no free anything). Hard to publish or get permission to talk about work outside the company.

Very good place to work, if you are willing to commit yourself

Principal Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

August 16, 2008

Pros: High quality and dedication of employees. Interesting and challenging technical problems: scale and (application) complexity. Cooperative working environment; not excessively political. Amazon still has a lot of new things left to do. Frugality is taken seriously: the work's the thing. Totally. Seattle is a great place to live.

Cons: Difficulty being able to leap-frog the state of the art. On-call can be very draining. Compensation is only average (but at least it seems to be average). Benefits aren't stellar. "It's still day one" gets tiresome. Frugality is taken pretty seriously: no frills (i.e. no free anything). Hard to publish or get permission to talk about work outside the company.

Overall, it's average on balance, but with great pluses and great minuses

SDEII • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

January 14, 2016

Pros: Smart co-workers, better than average custom development tools, opportunity to work with and on great technology, and make a difference.

Cons: Operational load, work-life balance sucks, and the turnover rate is humongous.

Overall, it's average on balance, but with great pluses and great minuses

SDEII • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

January 14, 2016

Pros: Smart co-workers, better than average custom development tools, opportunity to work with and on great technology, and make a difference.

Cons: Operational load, work-life balance sucks, and the turnover rate is humongous.

Not what I was expecting

Software Development Manager III • Former Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Very talented and professional engineers. Interesting problems to solve. Good relocation and hiring bonus, decent base salary. It will be a learning experience, no matter what your background is. Strong company culture and good team spirit.

Cons: The high hiring bar and mandatory layoffs every year make it hard to keep your team fully staffed. You will spend a lot of time recruiting. Management is distrusting by nature, and playing devil's advocate seems to be a corporate pastime. Expect strictly negative reinforcement and to hear that you are not doing good enough. Being a bully is considered a value and a requirement for advancement.

3.0
Not what I was expecting
Software Development Manager III • Former Employee
Seattle, Washington, United States
April 5, 2014
Pros: Very talented and professional engineers. Interesting problems to solve. Good relocation and hiring bonus, decent base salary. It will be a learning experience, no matter what your background is. Strong company culture and good team spirit.
Cons: The high hiring bar and mandatory layoffs every year make it hard to keep your team fully staffed. You will spend a lot of time recruiting. Management is distrusting by nature, and playing devil's advocate seems to be a corporate pastime. Expect strictly negative reinforcement and to hear that you are not doing good enough. Being a bully is considered a value and a requirement for advancement.

Very good place to work, if you are willing to commit yourself

Principal Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

August 16, 2008

Pros: High quality and dedication of employees. Interesting and challenging technical problems: scale and (application) complexity. Cooperative working environment; not excessively political. Amazon still has a lot of new things left to do. Frugality is taken seriously: the work's the thing. Totally. Seattle is a great place to live.

Cons: Difficulty being able to leap-frog the state of the art. On-call can be very draining. Compensation is only average (but at least it seems to be average). Benefits aren't stellar. "It's still day one" gets tiresome. Frugality is taken pretty seriously: no frills (i.e. no free anything). Hard to publish or get permission to talk about work outside the company.

4.0
Very good place to work, if you are willing to commit yourself
Principal Engineer • Current Employee
Seattle, Washington, United States
August 16, 2008
Pros: High quality and dedication of employees. Interesting and challenging technical problems: scale and (application) complexity. Cooperative working environment; not excessively political. Amazon still has a lot of new things left to do. Frugality is taken seriously: the work's the thing. Totally. Seattle is a great place to live.
Cons: Difficulty being able to leap-frog the state of the art. On-call can be very draining. Compensation is only average (but at least it seems to be average). Benefits aren't stellar. "It's still day one" gets tiresome. Frugality is taken pretty seriously: no frills (i.e. no free anything). Hard to publish or get permission to talk about work outside the company.

Overall, it's average on balance, but with great pluses and great minuses

SDEII • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

January 14, 2016

Pros: Smart co-workers, better than average custom development tools, opportunity to work with and on great technology, and make a difference.

Cons: Operational load, work-life balance sucks, and the turnover rate is humongous.

3.0
Overall, it's average on balance, but with great pluses and great minuses
SDEII • Current Employee
Seattle, Washington, United States
January 14, 2016
Pros: Smart co-workers, better than average custom development tools, opportunity to work with and on great technology, and make a difference.
Cons: Operational load, work-life balance sucks, and the turnover rate is humongous.

Amazon Interview Questions

Two Sum

Find two numbers in a given array that add up to a specific target value, and return their indices. Essentially, you need to efficiently locate the pair that satisfies the sum requirement.

Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock

You're given daily stock prices. Find the maximum profit you can make by buying and selling the stock once. You must buy before you sell.

ArraysDynamic Programming

Reorganize String

Rearrange the characters in a given string such that no two adjacent characters are the same. If such an arrangement is possible, return it; otherwise, return an empty string.

StringsGreedy AlgorithmsArrays

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