Amazon Advertising Software Engineer Interview Experience: Time-boxed debugging

The memorable part of my process was a take-home-style coding and debugging assignment. It began with HackerRank-like tasks in about 40 minutes, followed by a debugging section. In one version, I spent about an hour fixing an unexpected API-call behavior in a repository-style project so every test would pass.

It was difficult because it resembled real work: I had to find why a larger codebase did not behave as expected, not simply derive an algorithm. Another take-home included an AI-assistance angle that felt unhelpful, so I relied on my own tracing and reasoning. A later interview included LeetCode-style questions and discussion of my experience. I was rejected despite reaching that stage, and felt the debugging task was the differentiator. Once I could not make everything work perfectly, the process did not recover.

Location: Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Overall feedback: neutral. Offer status: no offer.