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Me. Taking advantage of beautiful Washington State.
Disclaimer: I'm not representing Amazon in any way with my posts, opinions written here are strictly my own.
As a bar raiser at Amazon (a little googling will answer what that is if you're not aware), I've gotten the opportunity to interview a lot of people. I've interviewed both very senior and very junior folks. Bar raisers do interview across all job families, and I've interviewed people for some pretty crazy positions. However, most of my interviews are for technical positions. Jobs like technical program managers, software development managers, quality engineers/managers, and of course the highest volume: software development engineers.
There are plenty of web resources regarding how to pass the functional (job skills) part of interviews. In fact, when I have friends and relatives interviewing, I send them to the internet to figure out what types of questions to prepare for rather than spend my time explaining. This type of preparing is pretty straight forward. You need to be good at your job, and make certain that the functional knowledge about your job is pretty fresh in your head. Perhaps how Hashtables work, or a bit about K-means clustering.
On the other hand, there isn't much on the internet about the other side of the interview process. When we at Amazon interview candidates, we're looking for a combination of those functional skills (coding, design, program management, 3D modeling.. you name it), and leadership skills. This applies to every potential new hire at Amazon, from experienced vice presidents to brand new college graduates. We literally assign specific Amazon leadership principles to each interviewer in the process. Those interviewers attempt to get a picture of how likely you are to be the type of leader we're looking for.
This article was written for the specific purpose of preparing you (a little bit) for that half of the interview. It's my version of giving sample questions. I don't know what you'll be asked, but I know what we're looking for. If you can be what we're looking for, we'd love to have you.
There are quite a few articles out there about what Amazon's leadership is like, how our leaders act, and what it's like to work at Amazon. There are mentions of continual innovation, cut-throat competition, and fast paced projects.
As an Amazonian, what I always tell candidates is that there is not much about working at Amazon which is consistent across groups. We don’t do much the “Amazon way”, because very little is centralized. We have the leadership principles which guide how we act. Otherwise, every group acts like a little startup. They establish their own processes and best practices. They build an organization and way of doing things uniquely their own, while still following our leadership principles.
Considering how little we have centralized, we use the bar raiser group as a type of glue across organizations. We select bar raisers from the pool of experienced folk at Amazon, not just those who can interview well, but more importantly - those who deeply understand our leadership principles. As bar raisers, we then try to hire people who can understand and act on our principles. Finally, we set them loose into the chaos which is Amazon, with an assumption and belief that hiring people who follow our leadership principles will lead to long term success.
When I have friends or relatives (or friends of friends, or friends of friends of relatives) ask how to prepare for an interview, I always suggest they read the description of the Amazon Leadership Principles, and think hard about each of them. More than any company I've worked with or heard about, we use those principles on a daily basis.
We obviously hire based on the principles. We give both positive and negative feedback which reference the principles. We are encouraged to be aware of our own successes and failures in relation to the leadership principles. I know I've certainly referenced a leadership principle or two while talking about parenting techniques.
I've read many thousands of interview transcripts, and it's often glaringly obvious which candidates have really read and grokked what the leadership principles mean, and those who either neglected to prepare for their interview, or simply didn't understand.
Note for the below sections. The quotes I'm putting in are actual snippets of interviews I've had, with close to literal quotes. Yes, they're extreme examples. I'm using a blunt instrument to make certain you know what I'm talking about.
Another quick note before getting into specifics. We interviewers are spending our time talking to you — the candidate — in hopes that you’ll be hired. It’s a big investment of our time, we don’t want you to fail. When we say something like “Well, that’s a good start, what else?”, it’s very rare that the right answer is “Um.. nope, that’s it”. Please listen carefully to what your interviewer is saying. Again, we’re here to help :)
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
Always one of the favorites to include in interview loops. I suspect as a principle it strikes so many candidates as obvious that they don't realize what we're really getting at. Every decision of consequence at Amazon involves the customer. Not just how they'll react, but what is actually best for them.