Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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159 stories

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AmazonSoftware EngineerIntern
May 2026

HR Promised LeetCode, I Got System Design and an AI Debate

A premium story — unlock it to read the full loop.

OnsitePremium0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
May 2026

A One-Hour Phone Screen With Two Sum Into Three Sum

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Technical ScreenXP0
AmazonSoftware EngineerNew Grad
May 2026

A Bar Raiser and Three Coding Rounds

R1: Bar Raiser The first interview was the Bar Raiser. It contained only behavioral questions and no coding. R2 Coding: Minimum Point Consumption Across Multiple Programs Problem description A user has points from different programs, such as airline miles, credit-card points, and store points. Each program has a different redemption rate, and the rates change daily. The user wants to pay a fixed…

Technical Screen0
AmazonApplied ScientistNew Grad
Apr 2026

A Month of Recruiter Ghosting Before One Chaotic Phone Screen

3/13 - recruiter call scheduled, system email assigned recruiter 1 3/15 - rejected, me: ??? 3/16 - recruiter call with recruiter 2, very nice person, said I could set up a mock interview with them, we scheduled a time, then they ghosted 3/17-4/13 - I kept providing my availability, kept hearing "does not meet team calendar," this kept repeating... 4/14 - recruiter 2 was out of office, recruiter c…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

an OA That Has You Debug a Password-Reset Repo with AI

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Online AssessmentXP0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Four Onsite Rounds From Ride-Hailing System Design to a Pub/Sub OOD Question

Phone Screen Coding: Merge products by category. Given a bunch of tuples representing two products being in the same category, with transitivity, find how many categories there are in the end and the size of each group. Classic Union-Find — I solved it with BFS instead and it also passed. Onsite (4 rounds) System Design: Design a ride-hailing app. The core focus was on high-frequency GPS writes f…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerSenior+
Reported Apr 2026

One-Day Loop After Three Uber Attempts

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 t…

OfferOnsite0
AmazonData ScientistIntern
Apr 2026

Two Back-to-Back Virtual Onsite Rounds

This interview was purely a case of getting lucky. I got the interview invite on 4/12, then had two VO (virtual onsite) rounds back to back on 4/22, with no break in between. Both interviewers held PhDs. VO1 Standard LP (Leadership Principles) questions, and then they dug into a lot of detail based on my answers. Tell me about a most recent project Calculated risk A time you needed to extend a de…

In progressOnsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

OA in April, Offer After Four VO Rounds in July

Mass-applied at the end of January. Got the OA at the end of April: Coding question 1: there's an original version of this on the forum — a circular array of drone destinations (first and last connected end to end), find the shortest path. Coding question 2: AI debug. I picked Java. The problem was an actor + movie website. Roughly the functionality: users can follow actors, and an admin can add…

OfferOnsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Mar 2026

Four Rounds Ending with a Bar Raiser

round 1: behavioral questions + coding Behavioral questions: a time you made a decision with incomplete information; a time you disagreed with a teammate or your manager and how you handled it Coding: Given an array of strings, group together all words that are anagrams of each other and return the groups. The interviewer also asked me not to use the O(n·k log k) approach with sorted signatures.…

Technical Screen0
AmazonData Engineer
Feb 2026

An Assisted VO With BQ and Two Coding Questions

Last week I ran an assisted Amazon virtual onsite (VO) interview for someone else. It was a behavioral round plus two coding questions. First, the behavioral part: How do you handle difficulties at work? When your team runs into difficulties, how do you encourage them and come up with a way to solve the problem? Why did you choose Amazon? Then the coding part. Coding 1: You're given an array of s…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerIntern
Feb 2026

Two Back-to-Back Rounds, BQ Plus OOD and a Course Schedule Twist

The Amazon intern interview was pretty classic. The two rounds were back to back, one hour each. The BQ part asked pretty classic stuff — mainly 3 common conflict scenarios, one dive deep, and one out-of-responsibility question, plus a relatively new question about using generative AI. There were quite a lot of follow-ups overall, but basically none of them were especially technical — my feeling…

Onsite0
AmazonApplied Science ManagerSenior+
Feb 2026

Passed the Phone Screen After Two Project Deep Dives and Heavy Leadership BQ

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In progressTechnical ScreenPremium0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Two-Part OA with a WorkHoursRegister System Design Problem

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Online AssessmentXP0
AmazonSoftware Development Engineer (SDE) InternIntern
Feb 2026

Coaching a Mock VO With BQ, Morse Code, and a Word Break II Follow-up

Last week I ran a mock/practice VO (virtual onsite) session for someone prepping for their Amazon interview for the 2026 SDE intern role. It was BQ plus two coding questions. First, the BQ part: How do you handle it when you run into difficulties at work? When your team runs into difficulties, how do you motivate them and come up with a way to solve the problem? Why did you choose Amazon? Then th…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Heap-Based Rental Revenue Problem and a String Block-Partition Problem

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Technical ScreenXP0
AmazonApplied Scientist
Feb 2026

Two Onsite Rounds, No Coding, ML Breadth Sank Me

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

A Sparse Sliding Window Over Infinite Bags

The first online-assessment question was set in Amazon's financial team. An analyst had an infinite line of bags numbered from 1 onward. Information about the money in the bags was given as continuous, nonintersecting segments. Every bag inside a segment held the segment's stated amount, while every bag outside the supplied segments held zero. The goal was to choose exactly k consecutive bags tha…

Online Assessment0
AmazonSoftware EngineerIntern
Jan 2026

A Topological Sort the Interviewer Drew on the Spot

Round 1's interview and timeline are covered in a separate link, so I won't repeat that here. The interviewer described the question verbally: Amazon has a ton of services, and there are dependencies between them. When we take some of those services offline, figure out which other services end up affected. Clarifying questions: always, always do this first — get the conditions of the problem comp…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

Passed Coding, Failed on Database Internals

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RejectedOnsiteXP0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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