[Zimahl]

3. Amazon considers all SDEs to be fungible but internal politics determines which group gets to interview a new candidate. Have an advanced degree and strong interest in machine learning? Too bad, US Retail needs someone to work on front-end development and they'll ask you lots of questions about javascript.

Yeah, this is pretty painful. I've phone interviewed with Amazon twice. At the time my resume was pure front-end developer with just a smattering of server-side experience. From the Amazon recruiter everything was smiles and 'perfect'.

The interview was for a server-side & database developer position with warehouse software. WTF?! Did you look at my resume for even twenty seconds? I got database design and management questions mostly.

That interview was brutal. What a waste of time for both parties.