Amazon Discover: Spring Insight Participant Review

The insight was an event, where multiple students from different countries and different universities came together, to expand their knowledge on how amazon software developer engineers operate within the organisation on a day to day basis. The first day started off with an intro to the program and a Q&A asking amazons employees general questions. We then went into small breakout groups where we discussed data structures and received a more detailed insight on what a coding assessment would look like.

Not only does coding encourage problem-solving, it helps get students thinking outside the box at the same time. When you come across a dead end in coding, there’s always a way you can backtrack and try again. This try mentality will help set our students up for future success. I was also opportune to cover the BFS and DFS algorithms which helped me to further expand my computational thinking and structured thinking. It was very helpful.

It was really helpful that i now have a realistic insight on what a specific role inside the organisation does and through going through assessments I have came to understand what type of sophistication in knowledge is requires to undergo assessments. Amazon have a vast amount of roles and businesses within the organisation, since the company is one of the largest to exist. Many different roles come with different kinds of challenges however all sections are centred around the main criteria in values, which is customer obsession.

It was very diverse and really nice to see how many different kinds of ethnicities are represented in the company. Amazon is a company of builders who bring varying backgrounds, ideas, and points of view to inventing on behalf of customers. Amazon supports a diverse and inclusive culture to make sure that different perspectives are covered. Amazon has a very competitive atmosphere as it was able to see during the coding exercises. Level of sophisticastion in code was clearly visible.

I really enjoyed the insight because of the team work that was made possible. Looking at the fact, that i have not covered most topics of the insight day in university, I am confident to say that I was able to increase my knowledge and get more engaged with the subject of coding. Rather complex data structures were presented in an understanding way leading to more engagement in the topic and computer science as a whole.

Yes

My biggest tip to give other fellow students is to be stress free during the application process and always to remember amazons values with the most important one being customer obsession. Also is it important to know what you want. I have came to understand that amazon is a large company with many different sections and many different professions. It is a core advice to not stress too much as employees at Amazon were also at that that stage in life and are able to understand students.