Had a few phone conversations with HR about specific positions and interests. One technical phone interview with coding on a shared google-doc-like website. Flew me to Seattle and put me up in a nice hotel. Interviewed with six people back-to-back without pause for four or five hours. Each interview was roughly the same: do some whiteboard coding, answer questions about your history. None of the whiteboard questions were riddles or tricks or things with one weird solution that you probably won't come to on your own. They were just mildly thorny problems where a decent solution involves a map or two and updating data in the proper order: decent and realistic stuff. Read up on Amazon's Leadership Principles. There is a lot of "behavioral interviewing" where you're asked about challenges you've experienced and how you've responded to them. I went in expecting general questions where they'd analyze my answer to see if it exemplified specific Leadership Principles. In reality, the interviewers just straight-up asked, "tell me about a time where you <INSERT AMAZON LEADERSHIP PRINCIPAL>". Where Amazon differed from other companies is that I was not given much opportunity to ask questions of the interviewers. They told me the project is secret and that most projects at Amazon are treated as secrets, even to other employees within the company. It's a little weird not knowing 100% what you're signing up for. Also, I didn't get a good feel for the culture of the team I'd be joining. The whole process took just over a month, which is apparently faster than usual. I was fielding interviews and offers from other companies so continually pushed Amazon to keep the process moving along.

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.