I didn't prepare for Amazon alone. What I brought into that loop came out of several earlier tries and a long stretch of studying.
I went after Uber three separate times before this. The first time I got through only 1 of the 4 interviews, the second time 3 of 4, and the third time 2 of 4. By the time Amazon rolled around, I had put in plenty of hours grinding LeetCode-style problems.
The thing that moved the needle was how I practiced, more than how many problems I did. I would grab questions that a specific company was known to ask and run them like the real thing: 30 minutes, talking out loud the whole time, explaining my thinking, writing comments first, and only after that coding it up and going over time and space complexity. That habit made a big difference for me.
Besides LeetCode, I also relied on visual demonstrations of algorithms and data structures. Watching what happens inside them helped me understand how they really work instead of just memorizing patterns.
System design was harder for me. Brazil doesn't have much of a culture around Big Tech system design, so I leaned hard on fundamentals. I kept notes, went through the core concepts, and did mock interviews that covered the whole design process from start to finish. In parallel I also worked through an online system design course. Whenever a topic didn't click, I'd try building it in code, such as how video chunking works, adapting resolution, segmentation, and bitrate handling. Doing that gave me real intuition.
Amazon itself had few surprises for me. What I was told in advance lined up with what I actually went through, and everything was organized well. One thing to watch for is that an interviewer can quiz you on the data structures behind a problem before giving it to you, and if you seem unsure about them, you may end up with a modified question. I never got that.
For the Leadership Principles, I put my effort into having strong stories that really happened. I wrote them out, then had ChatGPT turn them into spoken-style versions so I could rehearse them naturally. The goal wasn't to memorize them but to be able to recall a story and bend it to the question. During the interview nobody minds if you stop for a few seconds to work out which story suits the question before you start telling it. What you want to avoid is reading from notes or sounding rehearsed.
One thing to know is that the process wears you out. The loop normally runs in one day, with 1-hour interviews and 15-minute breaks between them. You don't learn the order of the interviews in advance, and you should expect about two Leadership Principles questions in every one of them. There are 8 LPs to prepare for, but you can't tell which ones you'll get or when.
Each interview ends with a slot for your own questions, and you should take it. Bring a different question for every interviewer, because it shows you genuinely care about the company.
If I had to boil it down: take the preparation seriously. It's hard work, and nothing replaces putting in the time.
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