Applied for a systems engineer position, got contacted pretty quickly from the recruiter within a few days for a call and a 1st round phone interview. There's no technical questions with the recruiter unlike other large tech companies just more a review of the process and they send you information about the 14 leadership principals. Their process is basically HR call, 1st round 1 hour technical call, some hiring manager review, then final interview 4 rounds and they decide. Apparently they also have some hiring managers and bar raisers that like can veto their picks and stuff but I didn't get that far.
I got to speak with one of the SDEs on the team and asked tons of questions pertaining to Active Directory and authentication(like more than half the interview). I mean it would generally be okay if I was expecting to know details of AD. I explained the best to my knowledge on how Linux authentication works. But I assume if it's for a Linux position, maybe a lot more actual questions on Linux like performance, debug, networking, config but just tons of questions about user mapping and AD and authentication. There was also 1/2 short script questions.
Then they contacted me a few days later and said the team really enjoyed talking to me and wanted to schedule next round interviews. The recruiter also called me and told me they also had an SDE position available and that would be a good possibility as well so I was looking forward to a code interview more technical.
Then a day or so later the recruiter calls me up and says they're not interested and that they think I'm not a good fit for a level 2 position or the SDE II position but a level 1 position that they don't have and don't want to open. They wanted me but didn't want me, totally confusing just let the candidates know you're not interested it's pretty simple.
Anyway the experience was horrible to me, totally disorganized, they kept drowning you in learning the leadership principals but never really even applied it. Never had a place say they're super interested, wanting to offer multiple positions, then back out all within a day.
Also another team that contacted me at Amazon, the guy kept asking me these salary questions and telling me about potential bonuses and asking me if I would be okay with this base offer price. I'm like I'm just trying to see if this position is even a good fit, why are you already trying to lock me into some salary when I haven't even talked to anyone yet?
Overall it's left me with a bad impression of Amazon, not a huge fan of them drowning you in their leadership principals(frugality), confusing interview process/questions, so I don't really recommend Amazon corporate at this point and don't think I'll apply again. The only good thing is their website lets you know where you're at in the job application process.
