Amazon Discover: Spring Insight Participant Review

A 3-day insight program, including insight sessions to Amazon, as well as coding workshops with a mentor in small groups. We had panel sessions with Software Development Engineers at Amazon, as well as QnA sessions with the recruiters. Finally, we were given an overview of the application process and valuable resources to help in our application process for an internship next year. In our small groups, we worked on mini challenges such as the kata game, deck of cards game, as well as discussing further on caching and graph traversal.

Yes, I was exposed to the style of technical interviews and the way we should approach a technical interview question. The technical workshops have also helped me with familiarising myself with Java without an IDE, just as it should be during a technical interview. I have also learnt about how we should tackle behavioural and competency-based interview questions. I also had the opportunity to meet with peers from other university and discuss on solutions to solve the coding challenges.

We were given insight into the Software Development Engineering role and what it's like working there. The panel session with current Software Developers was very insightful for me to know more about what a day in life of a software engineer looks like in Amazon. I really enjoyed the session on leadership principles of Amazon and really like the idea of a company being customer-obsessed to give customers the best experience while using their services.

The culture was quite inclusive and I had a lot of fun working on challenges with my mentor. My mentor was very supportive during the technical workshops and I enjoyed it very much. The participants in my group were very friendly and we had a great time solving challenges. There were many affinity groups being introduced to us, and the general atmosphere was that the company was quite supportive of people from different backgrounds and in different situations.

I really enjoyed the technical workshops as there were a lot of interactions. I also had the opportunity to familiarise myself with coding without an IDE and definitely gained alot of insight on tips and tricks in an interview, especially a technical interview as I have not done any. I find the Leadership Principles very interesting, and would really like to learn more about them. Throughout the 3-day program, I definitely had a lot of fun solving all the coding challenges.

Yes

For the Spring Insight Program, I would advice people to add interesting personal projects in the CV, as a strong CV is very important for this application process. Apart from that, just have fun during the sessions and get the most out of the program. The tasks during the workshops were very interesting and it was mainly a lot of fun so I definitely do encourage people to apply for the Spring Insight Technology Program.