While for me they were polite enough to call for rejection, but I still found the interview process little 'old school' at Amazon. For example, they asked me to write code on white board "Exactly as I'd write it on Computer, - AND - which is ready to go into production" (yes, these were the words). Really, you want me to hand-write code on whiteboard and also work as a pre-compiler and a compiler? I hope that's not the way you work.
Another friend of mine (who was rejected twice) was told to do the same thing - but at the end of it, the interviewer captured the photo of the code from his cellphone to properly evaluate it later. REALLY? You are not able to even evaluate the 'production ready' code someone else wrote, and you ask others to write it!
If I hadn't already heard from enough people I trust that working as a developer at Amazon sucks (depends on team, from what I hear, but I've heard lots more bad than good) your interview experience alone would be sufficient to get me to not bother interviewing with them.
I love them as a customer though!
For some reason their recruiters attempt to recruit me quite a lot (via LinkedIn, email, etc) despite the fact that they have no office in San Diego and I have no interest in living in Seattle.
I had the exact same feeling. Bezos' and Amazon's approach actually made me question how far would I go to build a billion dollar company. The customer experience is bar none the best I've seen at a company, but deep down I'd hope there would be a way to do it that wouldn't require leaving so much collateral damage.
-edit- Wife was talking to me while writing this post, hence, errors. -edit-
Seems to happen quite a bit. I get pinged on linkedin or email by them a few times a year, despite me living probably 700 miles from their nearest office in the United States. No interest really in moving to Seattle or their other office in Boston, but I still get the occasional inquiry.
Yea, this was a really key aspect during my interviews, including the initial phone interview.
All the code I wrote was expected to work in the browser (if copy/pasted) and behave as intended. I didn't have much trouble with it as I've been doing this kind of work day in, day out and at night too. I'd imagine it would be pretty difficult and frustrating for new grads though.
>"Exactly as I'd write it on Computer, - AND - which is ready to go into production"
From experience, I learned that you should just ignore what they are stressing on and just write the code as best as you can. Its an interviewer's way of saying I want to see if you can discuss the finer points of an implementation.
Or your twice-rejected friend put code on the board that was going to be shared in a WTF manner.
Any decent technical interviewer knows to let certain things slide and to grind out details in the interesting areas. I've interviewed enough people to assure that I don't give two shits what code was there two seconds after I saw it unless it's WTF-worthy. In those cases, you have earned a place in my heart.
Another friend of mine (who was rejected twice) was told to do the same thing - but at the end of it, the interviewer captured the photo of the code from his cellphone to properly evaluate it later. REALLY? You are not able to even evaluate the 'production ready' code someone else wrote, and you ask others to write it!