Amazon Interview And Rejection 

amazon talk starts at 4:48

i love your honesty and down to earth demeanor in sharing your experiences! so helpful!

Thanks for sharing Dave! I really appreciate people like you that take the time to help others in their efforts!

Thank you, Dave. It was really nice to hear that rejection is not the end but rather another beginning (: Good luck!

A close friend of mine works as a software engineer at Amazon. We both went to community college and studied "Cracking the coding interview" for weeks. He now works there full time, while I work elsewhere with near equal pay. I plan on applying next year. It's not as difficult as people make it seem. Memorize the leadership principles, know your data structures and algorithms and don't be socially inept. As long as you treat the interviewer like an actual person/friend and don't seem needy you're in a much better position than most. If it doesn't work out don't worry, you're now prepared. Go out there and apply to positions elsewhere...that's the route I took. There's never a shortage of software engineers wanted. You'll be fine.

He looks genuinely Disappointed. But more so I appreciate his intention to help others in spite of getting rejected.

Thanks, Dave, for your honest and informative interview experience self-critique. That took considerable guts to post. I suck at interviews, too, and would likely choke up on some of the technical questions. I have now worked 4 times for Amazon spread over 5 years and two fulfillment centers. While these were all blue collar positions, that uniquely qualifies me in a way to see how operations are handled in their plants and how the majority (95%) of workers get treated doing shift work. I have since gained a BS in IT, graduating in 2017 with honors. Not sure how to break out of factory work and work in an office setting just yet but after watching your wonderful video you have inspired me to try extra hard now to make this dream come true. Thanks and God bless, Dave.

Dave, this is one of the most honest and candid video I have ever seen. Excellent job.

I got hired at Amazon 3 different times as a package handler

Mate, this is truly edifying stuff. I sincerely thank you for putting it out for us.

This channel deserves more subscribers. Quality content, and an honest perspective.

As someone who's still trying to even get past the 1st round for internships...getting the interview itself is amazing :) But good to see you weren't crazy hard on yourself!

Great, great video! There's a lot of valuable information for any up and coming candidate for those large corporations! Keep up the great job!

Thanks for sharing man. I can sense from your experience how hard it can be to work at the big 4 tech companies. I'm pretty sure you will nail it one day. I wish you success on your journey.

Thanks for being truthful. There are a lot of liars on internet showing things that are not true about the real life.

Appreciate the honesty Dave. Thanks for the video, it was pretty useful.

Thank you! I experienced that live on-site lock up on a technical question. Really thankful that this video helped put this in perspective.

Dave, I enjoy watching your videos. They are always very insightful. Also love your humility.

Thanks, you are amazing. I just found this (Amazon HQ2 pulled out from NY last week), your advice is wonderful for the folks. Btw when you get rejected there that means you deserve better else where. Good luck!

You speak very well in front of a camera, this will make you a great person to interview and nail many jobs out there.

Great video. When you said you're not too good at coding challenges, you're showing that you're honest and that is a good thing to have. I also failed my phone interview with Google because I was extremely nervous since it was my first-time real SWE interview with no prior experience with interviews. I've been practicing, and I hope to pass the next time with Google. Good luck man!

Yesterday really chocked on my job interview with an easy boarding test after passing the technical phone testing. The previous one I nailed the testing code but couldn't explain well my code and failed that interview. So was really disappointed and thinking about finding another profession. Your video made me feel better and understand that I'm human and it's normal to fail sometimes. Thanks for being honest and sharing your fail with us.

Dave, thanks for the video!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR GIVING US GREAT AND SINCERE RECOMMENDATIONS!

thanks man! I have a final onsite interview next week. not sure if the process has changed but I had to do a hirevue interview after being contacted by the recruiter. its basically a program asking you questions and you answering them as it video records you. it compiles your videos and sends it to them for review. I was pretty nervous but as you mentioned I already knew what they were going to ask and had prepared answers by looking through amazon glassdoor interviews.

This was cool. More interview vids would be interesting

cool video man, love the honesty

Dave, Thank you! So honest and direct. I like what you have said. Good advise.

Hey man - I really appreciate you sharing this info. It's like getting the scoop from a clever friend. Subbed.

Hi Dave, I’m a UI/UX Designer and I watch your videos, thanks for making the vids and being so genuine. I had a job interview with AWS this past November and did well and they asked me to join their design team, however I postponed the deal because they wanted me to relocate to Seattle. I’m sure you can retry with Amazon, just have to sharpen up the second time. First time you got valuable insight into their process...

Awesome video, I love how to highlight your failures.

You don't need to memorize the leadership principles, you need to memorize your own stories. And yeep, your stories have to match their principles, just pick good stories and focus on practicing telling them :).

Great video man . I’m not in the IT industry but I enjoyed watching this .

If you're still in University and these are the types of jobs you want (big company software engineer), apply for internships like crazy, they almost always lead to a job with that company. Make a simple app and link to it on Github in your resume, or mention projects you've done at school that demonstrate your aptitude in CS. Don't make your resume cliche, make it personalized, feel free to let your character show up a little bit. These are the things that get through the resume filters at big companies. Google every instance of "{big_or_small_tech_company} internship" you can think of and apply (it takes a couple minutes for each one, using the same resume). Dave has great great tips in his videos. Awesome channel man.

Thanks for sharing your story. I'm fly to Seattle for an interview at Amazon now and am pretty nervous. I've studied and prepared as hard as I possibly could for two weeks, if I don't get the offer then its not meant to be. All I can do is try my best.

I really like your videos mate! I disable ad blocker just for your videos!

Hi Dave, I really like your videos. They are informative, precise and helpful...!!!

I think you are brilliant, great attitude!

All good tips Dave, thanks.

That thing about on and off really resonates with me. On some days I am able to do the hardest questions when I'm feeling good or in the flow. But on some due to nervousness and not being really present I stumble on medium level questions. It's good to know that other people face that as well. I have been doing a lot of mock interviews to avoid that.

This is a humbling video. Thanks for sharing.

I appreciate your honest feedback on this process. Thanks for sharing

Sorry to hear that for you. Sometimes it's all about the people you know to get in it sucks but its reality

Had my first interview with Salesforce this week, and I can totally agree with the choking up part.

Thank you so much for sharing the story!

Solid advice, appreciate it!

Thank you so much for sharing! It helped a lot!

best of luck and thanx for the video

wow thanks for sharing, good insights, especially about google. Sound and video very clear and easy to understand. I like the format you use. yes I have heard same about 14 principles and doing your homework ( prepare ) for an interview, I think more so with bigger companies, as they are into cultures and principles where as smaller companies, NOT so much.

Amazing!!! Thanks for sharing.. I just got rejected from a big company and I know it was because I wasn't prepared.. it's hard to do full preparation when you're intreviewing with different companies at tge same time..

Programming is one of those unique professions when during the interview they put you through all kinds of weird and challenging situations which never occur in real professional life. :) So be ready to be good in two sets of skills - one for your job and one useful only when you want to advance your career (but it still requires most of your personal unpaid time to keep those skills up-to-date)

This is a great video, thank you!

Im the same, i can def kill it on my own work at home but under pressure is a different story.

thanks for sharing man, i have heard a lot of behavioral stuff being asked as well but i couldnt even make it to the onsite :(

Right on on your comments about the Amazon Leadership principles and how you need to rock them during the interview.

I had the very same experience with Amazon. But you presented it awesome...Guys @ Amazon were awesome and more than that I liked the 14 principles...

Thanks for the honest talk. I am always intimidated by people who act like they are way smarter than me just coz they cleared a coding interview. I understand now that interview is more related to how much you can prepare and how you can handle stress situations. I will work on those aspects.

Thanks for the video Dave, I had a very similar experience interviewing with Amazon on-site in Seattle. I actually did pretty well in most of my 1 on 1 technical interviews, but Amazon has what's called a "bar raiser" interview round. This is usually with the most senior member of your interview panel and they have complete veto power, it's also typically the hardest tech interview you'll have. I know which one it was for me, and it was the one interview I didn't do well in. It didn't help that the woman conducting the interview was cold and rude, not helpful at all. I knew she wouldn't give me a thumbs up even if everyone else did. I've also heard that they encourage the bar-raiser to try and break you down like that to see how you handle the pressure (not sure if that's true though). I didn't get an offer, but now it's a year later and Amazon just invited me to do another on-site (this time in SF for their Amazon Music department). I'm hoping this one will be better!

thanks for sharing ! For me the interview at AWS went quite smooth onsite and i was interviewed for two different roles (some new embedded project and NLP for AWS Germany). I was not aware of the NLP interview part, but it was a nice surprise since i also let the recruiter know that this is one of my interests - though i am not an expert there yet. In the end i've got an offer for NLP job, but offered ~20k less than what i've communicated as my minimum expectation to the recruiter at the telephone interview. Since i am still happy with my current job (which is a bit less interesting than NLP, i have to admit but also challenging as SW architect for a large scale embedded system) , the city is much more liveable than the AWS location AND i've felt a bit cheated regarding the salary offer, i've rejected the offer.

Dave, thnx 4 diz video ! Helpful

Nice, straight to the point !

Amazon had by far the weirdest interview questions I have ever received. It's pretty much measuring your storytelling/memorization ability more than anything. It's as if your job will be to study high school again instead of a professional work.

I so understand this "on" and "off" feeling. I had an on day after doing 6 hrs of dynamic programming and graph questions where I felt like I could solve almost any leetcode question I had done up to that point if I had the test in the next two hours. But the next day it was difficult to get into the code and recall old concepts again. I guess just keep practicing till it becomes like breathing. But I am so nervous for tomorrow because I don't know whether I will be on or off. And I think that I am not yet at the point where I can guarantee a good performance even when "off"

I did 5 interviews at Amazon after graduating university, was rejected. Learned from the experience, got a great position elsewhere after that.

I have been working at home for Amazon as a Shipping and Delivery Support Associate for a month now. It's an okay job. I enjoy the commute from the bedroom straight to my home office.

I got the job at Amazon in Seattle. Very happy about it. Thanks for the tips

so helpful!!! thank you 🙏🏽 😝 for sharing!

Rejection is so hard but it is a great teacher :)

3:43 "...2 and a half times to make myself feel a little better..." lol I'm dead. Thank you for being honest about every thing throughout the video tho!!!

Keep going. I think highly of you.

Hey Dave! It was my comment (among others, I guess). I'm preparing for Amazon interview at the moment and was interested in your experience. Thank you very much for following up and telling your story!

I am currebtly in my 2nd interview cycle with Google. Failed facebook and Google onsites but got a nice west coast trip out of it. Nice advice interviewing is a noisy process and often comes down to luck.

Hi Dave, thanks a million for such a wonderful and very informative video mate. All I could say by watching your video is.. may you were supposed to work in a better place. Keep posting. Namaste, Chandu

As an intern at Tesla and Apple, I'm always interested in seeing how other companies interview and find candidates. Best of luck in your search!

Congratulations, for exposing the story. Actually, we learned a lot more from failure than success! In the end, it doesn't matter where you work for. The matter is whether are you happy or not in your current state! All the best!

You are so awesome! I'm a big fan of your channel. I learned a lot from your videos. I'm wondering if you can do a video talking about how to prepare behavior questions for IT interviews, like how to come up with examples, what can I do if can't find an appropriate example for a specific question, how elaborate the examples should be. That would be very helpful. Thank you!

Thank you for your helpful video. I wish I could see your video before applying to Amazon :D Did they give you any meaningful feedback after that? How long did you hear from them back?

Thanku for the honest video and sharing experience. Its really insightful and informative. Best of luck

Hey dude, thanks for sharing the experience. Fact is, AWS is the biggest player in cloud.. Sucks you got rejected! I subscribed to your channel. Looking forward to more great content!

you "look" good bro. keep up the good work and hope you get what you want.

Thanks for the insight!

LPs rule, but what is more important about the Leadership Principles is not only to have two examples but make sure they are high customer impact examples

Thanks for sharing this stories Dave it's always a pleasure. Btw, I'm sure you're more than qualified to work at this companies, the time hasn't simply come yet for you. I wanted to ask you a question please, i'm in a french engineering school and i'm studying 'Computer and Industriel engineering', but i'm not interested in the 'industriel' part. Do you think I can switch to full 100% computer/software engineering by studying alone ? I'm thinking to apply to computer/software related MS in the US to face this problem. Do you have a list of some fairly "reachable" universities but with reputable programs. Thank's a lot and good luck :)

Wow, this guy is like walking in my shoes. I recently had a recruiter reach out to me and tell job was deadset what I was skilled at. Once I said my salary (AUD 65-75k), she said we're looking for someone senior. It was an employment company too.

Hi Dave, could you please share your experience on how to calm yourself during an interview process? I am still a college student, and I had a tech interview this afternoon. It was fair algorithm problems, but I screwed it up because I was so nervous.

Love the tips

Hi, thanks for sharing. During the interview how they ask those leadership principle questions, I mean are they mixing with technical questions or they just ask in parts?

If Dave can't get a past these interviews, I have no chance

yep, I was up until 3 am the night before my interview and had about 6 pages of stories relating to each story and why I want to work there. I had all this written in a padfolio that I brought with me, which made me look much more prepared. I honestly had a lot of questions that didn't pertain specifically to their 14 principles, so I was kind of thrown off. I honestly thought the first of four that day went the worst, but the more interviews went, the more comfortable I felt about it and was able to come up with stories from my previous work experience that I didn't have written down in response to questions I hadn't anticipated. Got the offer a couple weeks ago and am heading up to Seattle for my new position :)

Man this videos is awesome i liked

Thanks for the great insight

Great insight....thanks for sharing

Just recently went through the interview process myself and I feel your pain. I was rejected after 2 phone interviews at my dream company, but then got an unexpected offer that was even better the next week. Were you able to bounce back from this and get an offer somewhere?

My question has always been this... if you're a developer and you're interviewing for a job as a developer, why is the interview geared in such a way to where you have to study for it? If they're testing your actual real world skills, why is it something people have to study for? I mean, if I'm engineering to do a job that I've done for years and years, why do I need to study for it? Shouldn't my experience be enough to do whatever it is you need me to do? How many times to you work with binary trees or linked lists in your career unless you're like, a core mechanics engineer or something?

Great video! Thanks!

Dave, just a thought (as someone who works at Amazon). You don't need 28 stories for the LPs. Rather just get a story that hits a lot of those LPs. Write them out, and try and see if they hit each one at least once. Good luck on your next try :)

Thanks for advice.

Yeah it's okay homie. I got to the end with Microsoft and it didn't work out either. I cried. Lol but good job man!

You have to be able to answer coding questions. You know sometimes the emphasis is on thinking quickly rather than a slow, deliberate and accurate progression towards a solution.

Thank you for sharing this. Mentioning about rejection by big tech companies and not nailing technical interviews is not something one can easily admit(though it is fairly common) as it might reflect a weaker side of ourselves and having need to deal with it. You are brave, Dave. Great sharing, I hope you get back on your feet soon and 'let the bad ones slide'