I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Amazon (Cape Town) in May 2020
Interview
Recruiters are so kind and accommodative, however do not expect the same from the Technical interviewers. On my first Phone Interview I faced a technical issue with my mic and the interviewer was quick to cancel the interview and propose a reschedule. I think its because they have tight schedules so do not want to spend time on something that might eventually will fail. The interview did not give enough time for me to try and sort out the issue on my end.
Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.