Amazon

Software Engineer (Internship) Interview Experience - Seattle, Washington

October 14, 2024

Positive ExperienceGot Offer

Process

Coding session: 15 min and 45 min (binary search with bounding check).

The behavior question is easy.

I suggest people be careful with the details in the question to avoid missing edge cases.

Questions

Binary search with bounding check.

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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

You will get to learn a lot

Front End Developer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Get to learn many things.

Cons: Peer pressure. No work-life balance.

You will get to learn a lot

Front End Developer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Get to learn many things.

Cons: Peer pressure. No work-life balance.

Avoid it at all costs if you are not a workaholic

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: You will be able to learn a lot here. There are many interesting problems to be solved, and you can be the owner of the project pretty quickly. Seattle. While it gets really cloudy from September to April, it has really nice summer weather. Also, it does not snow much. Flexible hours. You can come to the office pretty late and leave late if you have to. 401k, medical insurance. Free coffee, tea, and hot cocoa. You can have as many as you want. You can bring your dog to the office. You will be able to meet a lot of dogs here. Decent base salary with stocks. Amazon gives you a decent amount of salary.

Cons: On-call rotation. You will have to carry a pager and be on alert 24 hours because one of the software that you manage can go down, and the system needs a way to tell you about it. It is not fun for anyone to wake up at 3 AM or 6 AM once a week to solve a problem. This leads to a lot of time spent on operations rather than developing your skill sets. Bad work/life balance. Tight deadlines. On Thursday, a problem gets escalated and you need to solve it by the next Monday, before your manager's meeting, which means you have to spend your weekend. This happens very frequently depending on your team. Not much room for salary increase. The amount of increase in your salary will probably be the lowest in the industry unless you get promoted. If you are exceptional but did not get promoted, you will likely get an increase around the inflation rate (or lower). You will soon be able to find out that people who joined a year or two later than you are getting a higher salary with less skills. Frugality. You don't get free food or perks. You will have to work everything on your single monitor, and they will not accept your request to have multiple monitors. This is just a minor thing, but a 780 square foot office with 11 developers and 2 managers isn't a good place to focus on your work. You will be able to hear a dog barking every other 10 minutes in the office next to you.

Avoid it at all costs if you are not a workaholic

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: You will be able to learn a lot here. There are many interesting problems to be solved, and you can be the owner of the project pretty quickly. Seattle. While it gets really cloudy from September to April, it has really nice summer weather. Also, it does not snow much. Flexible hours. You can come to the office pretty late and leave late if you have to. 401k, medical insurance. Free coffee, tea, and hot cocoa. You can have as many as you want. You can bring your dog to the office. You will be able to meet a lot of dogs here. Decent base salary with stocks. Amazon gives you a decent amount of salary.

Cons: On-call rotation. You will have to carry a pager and be on alert 24 hours because one of the software that you manage can go down, and the system needs a way to tell you about it. It is not fun for anyone to wake up at 3 AM or 6 AM once a week to solve a problem. This leads to a lot of time spent on operations rather than developing your skill sets. Bad work/life balance. Tight deadlines. On Thursday, a problem gets escalated and you need to solve it by the next Monday, before your manager's meeting, which means you have to spend your weekend. This happens very frequently depending on your team. Not much room for salary increase. The amount of increase in your salary will probably be the lowest in the industry unless you get promoted. If you are exceptional but did not get promoted, you will likely get an increase around the inflation rate (or lower). You will soon be able to find out that people who joined a year or two later than you are getting a higher salary with less skills. Frugality. You don't get free food or perks. You will have to work everything on your single monitor, and they will not accept your request to have multiple monitors. This is just a minor thing, but a 780 square foot office with 11 developers and 2 managers isn't a good place to focus on your work. You will be able to hear a dog barking every other 10 minutes in the office next to you.

Great With Customers, Not Engineers

SDE-II • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

August 10, 2020

Pros: Works well for our customers.

Cons: Does not work well for engineers.

Great With Customers, Not Engineers

SDE-II • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

August 10, 2020

Pros: Works well for our customers.

Cons: Does not work well for engineers.

You will get to learn a lot

Front End Developer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Get to learn many things.

Cons: Peer pressure. No work-life balance.

5.0
You will get to learn a lot
Front End Developer • Current Employee
Seattle, Washington, United States
March 10, 2020
Pros: Get to learn many things.
Cons: Peer pressure. No work-life balance.

Avoid it at all costs if you are not a workaholic

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: You will be able to learn a lot here. There are many interesting problems to be solved, and you can be the owner of the project pretty quickly. Seattle. While it gets really cloudy from September to April, it has really nice summer weather. Also, it does not snow much. Flexible hours. You can come to the office pretty late and leave late if you have to. 401k, medical insurance. Free coffee, tea, and hot cocoa. You can have as many as you want. You can bring your dog to the office. You will be able to meet a lot of dogs here. Decent base salary with stocks. Amazon gives you a decent amount of salary.

Cons: On-call rotation. You will have to carry a pager and be on alert 24 hours because one of the software that you manage can go down, and the system needs a way to tell you about it. It is not fun for anyone to wake up at 3 AM or 6 AM once a week to solve a problem. This leads to a lot of time spent on operations rather than developing your skill sets. Bad work/life balance. Tight deadlines. On Thursday, a problem gets escalated and you need to solve it by the next Monday, before your manager's meeting, which means you have to spend your weekend. This happens very frequently depending on your team. Not much room for salary increase. The amount of increase in your salary will probably be the lowest in the industry unless you get promoted. If you are exceptional but did not get promoted, you will likely get an increase around the inflation rate (or lower). You will soon be able to find out that people who joined a year or two later than you are getting a higher salary with less skills. Frugality. You don't get free food or perks. You will have to work everything on your single monitor, and they will not accept your request to have multiple monitors. This is just a minor thing, but a 780 square foot office with 11 developers and 2 managers isn't a good place to focus on your work. You will be able to hear a dog barking every other 10 minutes in the office next to you.

2.0
Avoid it at all costs if you are not a workaholic
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Seattle, Washington, United States
April 29, 2013
Pros: You will be able to learn a lot here. There are many interesting problems to be solved, and you can be the owner of the project pretty quickly. Seattle. While it gets really cloudy from September to April, it has really nice summer weather. Also, it does not snow much. Flexible hours. You can come to the office pretty late and leave late if you have to. 401k, medical insurance. Free coffee, tea, and hot cocoa. You can have as many as you want. You can bring your dog to the office. You will be able to meet a lot of dogs here. Decent base salary with stocks. Amazon gives you a decent amount of salary.
Cons: On-call rotation. You will have to carry a pager and be on alert 24 hours because one of the software that you manage can go down, and the system needs a way to tell you about it. It is not fun for anyone to wake up at 3 AM or 6 AM once a week to solve a problem. This leads to a lot of time spent on operations rather than developing your skill sets. Bad work/life balance. Tight deadlines. On Thursday, a problem gets escalated and you need to solve it by the next Monday, before your manager's meeting, which means you have to spend your weekend. This happens very frequently depending on your team. Not much room for salary increase. The amount of increase in your salary will probably be the lowest in the industry unless you get promoted. If you are exceptional but did not get promoted, you will likely get an increase around the inflation rate (or lower). You will soon be able to find out that people who joined a year or two later than you are getting a higher salary with less skills. Frugality. You don't get free food or perks. You will have to work everything on your single monitor, and they will not accept your request to have multiple monitors. This is just a minor thing, but a 780 square foot office with 11 developers and 2 managers isn't a good place to focus on your work. You will be able to hear a dog barking every other 10 minutes in the office next to you.

Great With Customers, Not Engineers

SDE-II • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

August 10, 2020

Pros: Works well for our customers.

Cons: Does not work well for engineers.

4.0
Great With Customers, Not Engineers
SDE-II • Current Employee
Seattle, Washington, United States
August 10, 2020
Pros: Works well for our customers.
Cons: Does not work well for engineers.

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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