Amazon / AWS AU

• Massive scope — work on infrastructure used by millions of companies globally
• Strong career trajectory for those who stay and level up
• Compensation competitive, especially RSU vesting after year 1 cliff
• AU team culture more autonomous than US counterparts
• Strong brand — "worked at Amazon" opens doors globally

• 5-day RTO mandate from Jan 2025 — no WFH flexibility whatsoever
• Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) used aggressively — ranked in peer group
• Work-life balance rated only 3.1 in Sydney
• High churn — many engineers leave after vesting cliff at year 1–2
• "Pre-2024 culture was better" — a common theme in recent reviews

"Tell me about a time you took ownership of a problem that wasn't technically your responsibility. What did you do and what was the outcome?"

💡 Leadership Principle: Ownership. Amazon wants people who act like owners, not employees. Avoid saying "that wasn't my job".

"Describe a time you had to make an important decision quickly without having all the data you wanted. What was your process?"

💡 Leadership Principle: Bias for Action. Amazon values speed and calculated risk — they don't want people who wait for perfect information.

"Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager or team on an important decision. What did you do?"

💡 Leadership Principle: Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. They want to see that you'll push back respectfully, then fully commit once decided.

"Tell me about a time you delivered a project under significant constraints — tight deadline, reduced team, or limited resources."

💡 Leadership Principle: Deliver Results. Use specific numbers — how late was the deadline? How understaffed? What was the actual outcome?

"Design Amazon's product recommendation system — "Customers who bought this also bought...""

💡 Classic Amazon system design. Cover collaborative filtering, item-based vs user-based, real-time vs batch, and how to handle cold start for new users.

"Given a binary tree, return the level-order traversal of its nodes' values (BFS). Follow-up: do it in reverse level order."

💡 Common Amazon coding question. They test BFS fundamentals with a queue, then look for clean code and edge case handling (null tree, single node).