Amazon Senior Software Engineer interview questions

The interview process was geared toward making me feel comfortable. First the interviewers would talk a bit about themselves and what they do at Amazon, followed by very open-ended questions about myself. After the initial open-ended questions, the interviewer would get into more specific topics and/or coding questions. The coding questions required writing close to syntactically correct code on a whiteboard, but the interviewers were OK with a bit of handwaving. The interviewers were also helpful in identifying issues with my solution in a way that kept my comfort level and confidence high. Overall it was a very positive experience.

Yes, you read that right.. 180 days. First phone interview, interviewer never bothered to submit feedback to the system. Recruiter would contact and go dark for a month, contact and dark.. Finally another phone interview. Was told I had to fly to Seattle for the on-site even though I live less than ten miles from the job location. I have to fly in the day before, so it takes me two days to do this interview. Also, I could not get a job description although I was told multiple teams were interested. After the flight had been booked I finally get a job description and the required skill-set is nowhere near what my resume lists.. I go anyway because I had never been to Seattle, though I started to have my doubts about all of it. Do the interview and everything goes ok. For dealing with technology so far out of my comfort zone I'd say I did pretty well overall. Lots of algorithm and cloud based questions. Aced a couple, did ok on some and got stuck on one. Get a call the next day that the team decided to pass because of my lack of knowledge of their technology. Told the recruiter that I thought it was odd that I was brought in for this job in the first place and expected the team to understand that I had to learn on the job.. Get quite rudely told that "we hire on experience, not potential." and she tells me she'll call back in a year or so. If you only hire on experience, why contact someone who has none of the skills listed that you are looking for? This turned into a giant waste of time for everyone involved because of some recruiter not doing their job.