Interview Experiences

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

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113 stories

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AmazonSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Weighted Random Generator, Then a Statewide Sensor System Design

Locked — open it to unlock the full story with XP.

OnsiteXP0
AmazonSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

Four Onsite Rounds, Rejected After the System Design Round

Timeline: referral, then a recruiter call two weeks later that set up the phone screen for a week after that, then the onsite (four rounds) a week after that, and a rejection two days after the onsite. Overall impression: the coding difficulty wasn't that high, basically all LeetCode Medium, and every round asked Leadership Principles (LP) questions. I think what got me in the end was System Desi…

RejectedOnsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerNew Grad
Jan 2026

Three Rounds Back to Back, from Behavioral to System Design

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OnsiteXP0
AmazonSoftware EngineerIntern
Oct 2025

Two Back-to-Back VOs, an Extra-Interview Scare, and an Offer

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OfferOnsiteXP0
AmazonSoftware EngineerSenior+
Sep 2025

Five Rounds, No Breaks, and a Gum-Chewing Hiring Manager

Just finished interviewing this week. Not a great experience. The whole process was rocky — I got re-matched to a different team several times, and there were two months between the phone screen and the onsite. Security & Service org. It felt like they just wanted to go through the motions, not like they actually wanted to hire me. Round three with the hiring manager was especially bad — I've nev…

RejectedOnsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerSenior+
Sep 2025

Five-Round L6 Onsite, No Breaks, One Rough HM

Just finished interviewing this week. Not a great experience. The whole process was rocky — I got switched between teams for matching several times, and there were two months between the phone screen and the onsite. Security & Service org. It felt like they wanted to go through the motions without actually wanting to hire me. The third round with the HM in particular was a really bad experience,…

RejectedOnsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Two Online Assessment Questions on Calorie-Maximizing Jumps and Password Similarity

Question 1: Problem description: A user is doing jump exercises using an Amazon fitness tracker. There are n blocks of different heights (height[i] is the height of the i-th block). The user starts from the ground (height 0) and must jump to every block exactly once, with the goal of maximizing calories burned. The calories burned jumping from block i to block j are calculated as (height[i] - hei…

Online Assessment0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Recruiter Gave a Last-Minute Ultimatum for the Only Onsite Slot

I still don't know why they gave me SDE1 despite having 1.5 years of experience. The recruiter was toxic — no response the day I reached out, and then the next morning, before I was even out of bed, they called me and said there was only one interview slot available, and if that didn't work for me they'd just reject me. So I basically got pushed into it with no time to prepare. I interviewed last…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Virtual Onsite with BQ, an OO Ticket System, and a Recommendation Engine

This was a virtual onsite. The interviewer told me right away that he'd be taking a lot of notes, so I shouldn't read too much into it. BQ section: The first question was on "Ownership" — he asked if I'd ever run into something that wasn't technically part of my responsibilities but I went ahead and took care of it anyway. The second was "Deliver Results" — he asked for an example of delivering s…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Three Onsite Rounds of BQ, Coding, and OOD

Round 1: Asked 6 behavioral questions, covering a pretty wide range. The ones I remember are: How to handle a tight deadline Proactively helping others (help others) Digging into a problem's root cause (deep dive) How to handle disagreeing with a colleague (conflict with colleague) Doing something outside your scope (outside your scope) How to respond to negative/harsh feedback Round 2: Two codin…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware EngineerSenior+
Aug 2025

a Vague LockingTree Screen That Ran Long

I interviewed for L6 last Friday — I'm probably 80% sure I failed. It was with the Aurora team, and the interviewer ran the whole thing. The interview was scheduled for one hour, but I got tortured for an hour and a half. Right off the bat the guy spent about 10 minutes introducing himself, then had me talk about a time I both challenged and simplified a system — the scope needed to be big enough…

Technical Screen0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Three Onsite Rounds With a Bar Raiser and Nonstop BQ Challenges

Round 1 (possibly a bar raiser): The interviewer gave me 2 BQs and 2 coding questions. BQ1: tell me about your project... follow up... BQ2: don't remember. Coding1: given an int array where only one number appears an odd number of times, find and return that number. I used a hash table -> follow-up: how do you optimize the space complexity to O(1)? I got stuck on this one for a while, we went bac…

Onsite0
AmazonSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Bar Raiser Behavioral Marathon, a Parking Lot OOD, and Route-Planning Coding

Round 1: it went straight into bar raiser mode, five BQs back to back for the whole round, totally overwhelmed me. The ones I roughly remember: most interesting/proud project, dealing with ambiguity, conflict/different opinions, how to make your work more efficient (something like that? I used "prioritize things"), and the most challenging thing you've dealt with. Tons of follow-ups, and the inte…

Onsite0

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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