Amazon Software Development Engineer Apprenticeship

Had my assessment centre yesterday. Waiting to hear back now. Fingers crossed.

hey how did it go, how were the questions

i'll let you find out for yourself you are my competition. i think it went well though. whens yours?

Did u get an offer?

Hello,
Would anyone from this thread be willing to shed some light on the process?
I'll be applying this year and I want to be as prepared as I can.
By now I would think you have been either accepted or not in the race anymore
and maybe you wouldn't mind talking about it.
I know what the process entails so I'm looking for specific questions and coding challenges presented
during the interviews.
If you can't share, well thank you for taking the time to read anyways!

I dont really remember much from the process to be honest. Everything prior to the assessment center was pretty straightforward.

They asked me three sets of questions. One was simple programming questions, talking about datatypes, arrays, and other data structures like that.
The second one was really confusing, and to be honest it sounded like the guy asking the question didn't understand it either. He was asking something like if I were to create a new social media platform, what features would I include and what would be needed to implement them. When I started going into details about how I would structure the backend, he stopped me and changed the question. I'd imagine this was the part of the process that ruined my chances.

I forgot what the third set of questions were.

I also had to make a presentation - just fill it with stuff about their leadership principles, that's all they want to hear.

There was a group exercise in which we were separated into groups of about 8. The scenario was that we were trapped on a raft for however many days, and we had to rank a list of arbitrary items in order of importance. We did this separately, and then had to reconvene and agree as a group what the order should be. Some people barely said a word, so you want to try to get these people involved. Try to take charge but not in an obnoxious way. If you notice someone not saying anything, ask their opinion. Don't talk over people and don't put other peoples ideas down. I couldn't tell you where I went wrong with this task.

I'm probably not the best person to give advice since I didnt end up getting accepted, so take all this with a pinch of salt.

After being rejected, they said that if we wanted, they would call the rejected applications and give them feedback as to what went wrong. I emailed them multiple times asking for this feedback as I was genuinely curious because I believed I performed well throughout the entire process, and I didn't get a single response from anyone. So I can't relay any of this feedback to you.

Earlier into the process I was given a coding exercise to do, if you read back in the thread, you'll see what they were. If you have any basic software dev skills, you'll be fine with any coding question they ask. What's hard is jumping through the hoops that Amazon have defined and you need to figure out.

Make sure you do some research into what it's like working at Amazon, because from what I've heard, it's very stressful and demanding. Maybe I'm saying this because I'm still slightly sour about the whole thing, but every developer ive spoke to that used to work for Amazon has had only negative things to say. The 30k a year is obviously fantastic for a young person, but just consider their working culture.

I am now working at a large shipping/freight/logistics company doing the same degree apprenticeship, and I believe I am so much happier now than I would've been had I got the Amazon job.

Good luck, I hope you have a better experience than I did. Any more questions, feel free to hit me up, and I'll try my best to remember.

Hey!
Thank you so much for your detailed answer. I really appreciate it.

Regarding that second question about the social media platform, I wouldn´t know what to say either to be honest.

You had to do a presentation about what?

The group exercise example is very helpful too, thanks!

Yes, I'm aware of the coding exercises you did, I have read this whole thread.

Regarding of what it is like to work for Amazon. I have also heard not so good stories.
But on the other hand, I have heard good ones. So I guess you wouldn't know until you are in.

Congratulations on getting a different apprenticeship in a place that you actually enjoy!

I was wondering if you got those behavioral questions of the like. Why did you want to do an apprenticeship with Amazon?
Or tellm of a time that you had to make a decision quick and had contradictory information.

I am studying Soft Dev at college at the moment but appart from that I don't have any experience with coding or dev environments. So I don't know how to tell a story that showcases their leadership principles.
Do you have any tips for that?

Also maybe a good platform to practice coding challenges.

Again thank you so much!

Hello,
Would anyone from this thread be willing to shed some light on the process?
I'll be applying this year and I want to be as prepared as I can.
By now I would think you have been either accepted or not in the race anymore
and maybe you wouldn't mind talking about it.
I know what the process entails so I'm looking for specific questions and coding challenges presented
during the interviews.
If you can't share, well thank you for taking the time to read anyways!

Hey!
Thank you so much for your detailed answer. I really appreciate it.

Regarding that second question about the social media platform, I wouldn´t know what to say either to be honest.

You had to do a presentation about what?

The group exercise example is very helpful too, thanks!

Yes, I'm aware of the coding exercises you did, I have read this whole thread.

Regarding of what it is like to work for Amazon. I have also heard not so good stories.
But on the other hand, I have heard good ones. So I guess you wouldn't know until you are in.

Congratulations on getting a different apprenticeship in a place that you actually enjoy!

I was wondering if you got those behavioral questions of the like. Why did you want to do an apprenticeship with Amazon?
Or tellm of a time that you had to make a decision quick and had contradictory information.

I am studying Soft Dev at college at the moment but appart from that I don't have any experience with coding or dev environments. So I don't know how to tell a story that showcases their leadership principles.
Do you have any tips for that?

Also maybe a good platform to practice coding challenges.

Again thank you so much!

the asssessment centre is usually july-august but may be different due to covid.
the coding challenges arent too difficult, generally leetcode easy diffculty.

as to work life balance at amazon, it is entirely dependent on your manager, you can have a nice manager, or a **** one, as is with every company, generally certain orgs are little better/worse than others for wlb, but apart from that there isn't really any way to know unless you know your manager beforehand. for reference, AWS is known for not having a great wlb but apprentices don't work in aws, the wlb for apprentices is usually 9-5 with flexitime, and there are lower expectations of apprentices.

you don't need to have a lot of exp with coding environments, but you should have done at least 1 project of some sort to showcase in the application.
their leadership principles are not specific to software dev so you don't need to always relate it to that context

IIRC the presentation was 'Your proudest accomplishment'. Which imo is a pretty stupid topic for young people, most of whom wouldn't have achieved that much in their life. I prepared for questions like that, but none came up. They're more interested in seeing if you fit their principles. I would highly recommend you start working on some development projects outside of college. Maybe make yourself a personal website or make some sort of backend system for a fake company. Things like that. Codewars is good for coding challenges, they might be a bit difficult for someone with little experience.

Thanks!
At what point do I have to show the project? Is it when I apply added to my CV? at what stage of the selection process?

Also regarding the leadership principles. How do you go about it? you are blatantly bringing them up directly like: yes, there was a time where I did this and I had the opportunity to use such principle. Or you just tell your story nicely and they will pick up from it that you are indeed the living example of their principles?

cv, and later on when they ask.

with the leadership principles you tell the story first and then relate them to a leadership principle, don't do it the other way round or it will sound a bit needy.

just saw your other post saying that you will have a cloud practitioner and solutions architect cert, its a terrible idea to tell them that, they have a solutions architect apprenticeship which does exactly what you are doing, they will be confused as to why you didn't apply to that, those qualifications are not going to make you stand out at this level.

you can also use any programming language it doesn't matter

wow, that I'm more confused than I was before. I thought that was going to be good for me. It's not like those certs are super hard or anything.
I haven't seen that solutions architect apprenticeship and I just looked again.
could you share a link, please?

https://centreforapprenticeships.co.uk/vacancy/1000006822/
they arent hiring for that one at that one, they have only had 1 intake so far which started January so will probably not be opening vacancies for a while

Thank you!
I see I was just looking at that. But yes it's old and there is nothing new. Also, that will probably be only in London, right?
Also, 4 years to become a solutions architect is an awful lot of time. By the end of the 4 years, you should have the pro one and pretty much all the other specialties together.

4 years is not a lot for someone who has just come out of school, if you're a grad then yes 4 years is a bit longer, but its quite rare for someone to become a csa out of uni anyway, most people becomes csa's after changing from an SDE or BI. plus you have the advantage that you will likely be offered a role after completing the apprenticeship .

and yea, the csa apprenticeship is only in London atm, which one are u applying for the sde?

Yes, that's the route you would normally take but it does not mean it's the only one. And as someone that got into it without knowing anything about programming or networking for that matter. I'm telling you that cert it's not that hard.
I just think that during those 4 years will learn way more than that!
I'll be applying to Edinburgh. If I figure out what to do with my CV after your last recommendation I'm like meh...
Also I'm not that young anymore, I would lie if I say I'm not worried about them not wanting older people because of you know, making an investment on someone younger..etc

your age doesnt matter, some apprentices are 18 some are 30.

your best bet at getting in is having personal projects in programming, ie, a website, an app etc.. a Wordpress site probably isnt going to make you stand out that much as it doesn't involve programming (unless you're editing the files directly, in which case you should be able to make a website with a proper javascript framework anyway).
whether the solutions architect cert will disadvantage your application will depend on the interviewer, its most likely they wont care as its not SDE related, the closest thing I can think of would be to maybe use the aws CDK to provision deployments which you could do a project on.