I have shared this story on here before, but my first "real interview" out of college was at Amazon and to this day it is still one of the worst experiences of my career.
The recruiter was great, super nice, got me all organized for a full-day loop. They gave me some things to prepare, so I did. Admittedly, I was under-qualified for the job as a fresh grad but was assured that'd be fine.
Still, the entire team made it abundantly clear how much I was apparently wasting their time even being in the room with each of them as they took turns throughout the day talking to me.
Felt so unbelievably toxic, and even though this was in the early 00s, I have never even considered working there since.
Very similar experience. It was a boring and tedious interview. The behavioral part of the interview felt odd with a focus on tailoring my experiences around Amazon principles which I wasn't aware of until a few days before the interview. The employees seemed nice, though, but not really cheerful and a little standoff-ish. It honestly felt like a more traditional style of interviewing.
I contrast that with another FAANG interview I had, where you had lunch on campus and they tried to leave a positive impression.
I found my Amazon interview to be surprisingly easy and friendly, except for one interviewer who gave me Alien Dictionary and got offended when I told her this was a well known leetcode problem. Oops..didn't get the job.
The recruiter was great, super nice, got me all organized for a full-day loop. They gave me some things to prepare, so I did. Admittedly, I was under-qualified for the job as a fresh grad but was assured that'd be fine.
Still, the entire team made it abundantly clear how much I was apparently wasting their time even being in the room with each of them as they took turns throughout the day talking to me.
Felt so unbelievably toxic, and even though this was in the early 00s, I have never even considered working there since.