Amazon Software Engineer interview experience

The interviewers were pleasant, and overall the atmosphere was positive enough that nothing felt adversarial.

That said, the format itself felt a bit dated to me. I kept thinking about how LeetCode-style tasks were being used as a proxy for real-world engineering ability and how the cultural-fit piece didn’t necessarily complement the coding signal. Even before recent AI breakthroughs, it already felt like the assessments were measuring something narrower than everyday work would require.

I didn’t receive an offer. My honest reflection was that I could do the tasks, but the framework didn’t