The first round went by quickly and I got the contract offer — March 16th, in Python. I heard the batch is about 15 people per batch.
Some background on me: Ivy League school, ECE switching into tech, class of 2026, new grad, no internships, GPA 3.8, a few ML school projects. I've been going for SE/SDE/SWE roles and honestly feel like I don't have much in the way of skills or experience. I went to every info session my school held, applied through Dropbox's referral link and every other referral link I could find, and also looked for referrals on forums — mostly rejections or just silence. I reached out to an alum who's been at Amazon for seven years for advice. He said my resume is solid but I need to network more and get referrals, and that for interviews I especially need to practice explaining my thought process, writing code, and talking through it with the interviewer.
The career services staff at my school have also been putting in real effort, bringing companies in for a career fair every week, but the job market/marketing for the class of 2026 has just been terrible.
Pilot's ICC process was just one 40-minute interview:
- Listening/speaking/reading/writing (felt kind of like an elementary school English test)
- Python trivia: the difference between tuple and list, the difference between is and ==, HTTP vs HTTPS, etc. I couldn't answer the CRUD/API question.
- One LeetCode problem, anagram, and I wasn't allowed to use sort(). My brain blanked on the hash approach and I didn't get it — it's been too long since I've practiced.
In the end I still passed, and I'm grateful to the interviewer, who was really nice.
But I think this ICC path might not really be the right fit for me, so in the end I turned it down.
Wishing everyone well, and hope you all find the path that's right for you.
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