Amazon Intern - Software Development interview questions

Straightforward. Two phone interviews were scheduled on consecutive days a week after the recruiter contacted me. Asked some data structures question, a few simple coding problems, and then some general OO design stuff. Coding was done via collabedit while on the phone. Interviewers were nice and would provide hints if necessary. Make sure you know your running times.

Amazon posted an intern offer on my school career website. I submitted my resume, was contact about 2 weeks later to schedule two 45 minute phone interview. First interview I was asked about to describe projects on my resume, then was asked to list off some data structures. Asked to list all the sorting algorithms I could think of (only listed mergesort, quicksort) and then was asked if I knew the runtimes of these. Then was a coding question which I can't remember, something to do with strings. I had to read it aloud back to him. Asked how I could improve it and the runtime. Then asked about object oriented programming and how I would represent a card game and which methods it would need. The interview ended with me asking questions. The second interview was with someone with a heavier Indian accent, he said he was a tester. He asked me the difference between an arraylist and linked list, then to write a program on paper, I cant remember what it was exactly. I was then asked how I would test the program and if there were bugs how I would deal with them. Then asked about polymorphism and inheritance. Interview ended with me asking questions. I was contacted about a week later to schedule a 3rd phone interview and they actually apologized that I had to have one. Had the interview a week later and right off the bat was asked only one programming question. It was how to find a subset in a string. I had to describe the runtime. The interview was only a half hour I believe and it ended with me just talking to the guy, he had been working there for 7 years and knew someone else who had for 13 years. Asked about the pagers, etc. The day after I was offered an acceptance. To tell the truth, I thought I ruined my chance with all interviews. I answered runtimes wrong, and admitted I didn't remember what polymorphism was. So I was very surprised that I had an offer for another interview. I also thought I ruined the 3rd interview because it took em a very long time to figure the answer--and I don't even know if i got the right answer in the end, because the interviewer had to help me. The main key is to EXPLAIN YOURSELF. I said I had difficulty with things, and how I would TRY to program it or fix it and just talked it out while I was writing it. It really helps to show how you think ,which I guess they liked in my case!