rejected to accepted by Amazon 2 years later as SWE

hey fee here it's good to see you again
if you've been following this channel
for a while you'll probably know that I
was rejected by Amazon um about four
years ago and yeah it's one of my most
popular videos and I'm here to set the
record straight so if you saw that video
you'll know that I got rejected two
times within the span of three months
and it sucked I did get a different
offer I didn't like it nearly as much as
working at some kind of big company I
don't think the experience was that
great
but yeah today we're going to dive into
how I redeemed myself and restored my
ability to look myself in the mirror
after that we can discuss some interview
details we can look at the literal offer
letter we can go over the details of
like the TC breakdown that's
compensation breakdown and also we can
talk about whether or not I regret the
decision of not taking the role or not
um drop a comment down below with your
guest right now I want to know what you
think about whether or not I regret the
decision or not so 2 years after being
rejected uh I finally got an offer from
Amazon and I I was just too busy in the
grind to make a video about it all right
to be fair in 2022 it was the tail end
of like the software engineering
Euphoria so it really seemed like
interviews and getting accepted was a
lot easier back then so take this with a
grain of salt I still see it as a pretty
bow on my Amazon Interview Saga as far
as interview prep at that point i' had
done about 125 leak code questions and I
was uh pretty heavy into algo monster I
really like their platform and the way
it works from like a groundup kind of
data structures knowledge um building
kind of uh platform so pretty much if
you have no knowledge in data structures
and algorithms you you can start with
algo monster and I think that's a great
place to grow your data structures and
algorithms knowledge as far as the
language I chose it was pretty I guess
untraditional for a back in engineer to
choose JavaScript but that was my
language of choice and I really doubled
down and did all my lead code in
JavaScript and also learned how to
implement data structures and algorithms
in
JavaScript and I don't really feel like
I faced any discrimination for choosing
JavaScript I thought that I would I I
remember spending hours searching is
Javascript a good language for backend
interviews and it end up ended up being
a non-issue so like any standard Amazon
Interview um process it starts off with
the hacker rank challenge um I took the
the challenges passed them and then I
got a followup from the recruiter
talking about scheduling ons sites but
before that it was kind of a confusing
process of like choosing what team I
wanted to interview with and things like
that so I ended up doing a split
interview where uh I I've had the
possibility of going onto some uh
machine learning like shopping team
where they basically do like a self
checkout thing in your cart or it was um
a database team te it was like Aurora I
think so each interview started off with
some like leadership style question and
we basically just practiced that
beforehand by mapping your uh previous
experience with some leadership skills
and then it's just a memorization game
at that point you just regurgitate what
you practiced I don't exactly remember
what system design question I had but as
far as the coding questions I had uh one
question where I had to develop some
kind of um basically badging system
where it would you would count how many
people were in the building at any
specific time and the other question was
some like really hard graph question
that honestly I did embarrassingly on um
the manager had to help me give me a lot
of hints throughout that question and I
thought I failed to be honest but I he
ended up thinking that I did pretty well
I think it's because I collaborated with
him pretty well um in that interview
with the hints and we ended up solving
the question so after these interviews
I'm pretty much falling asleep there was
another short interview with the
director and that went pretty well it
was just like a chitchat pretty much and
yeah after that I was just waiting for
the results and the next day I got the
call from the recruiter saying that she
was going to draft up the offer letter
and I got got it that afternoon at this
point I'm super hyped I've never gotten
a big Tech offer before and um here it
is just Amazon I printed it out for prop
purposes really I'm just going to show
it on the screen so here you go it's
right here or over here not really sure
which part side I'm going to put it on
so as far as the compensation details
the base salary would have been 140k um
way more money than I had ever seen in
my life but if you really think about it
these high cost of living areas are
basically a different country and it it
doesn't even the the numbers don't even
make sense when compared to a place like
Louisiana where I was from as far as
stock goes I was granted well they would
have granted me 34 shares pre-split so
after the split it's like times 20 um
what is 34 time
20 I mean
680 yeah and on top of that there was a
sign on bonus um for year 1 it was
49700 and then for year two it was 34
3300 so that would have ended up being a
rough uh total compensation of about one
like 95 per year um if I did not sell
any stock I'm not really sure I'm not
going to go back in time to see what the
stock prices were at the time but it was
it was a great offer for me for me at
the time like I said earlier the role
was for a general back-end position but
the product was using machine learning
and AI pretty heavily so the manager
pretty much told me that eventually I
would be able to get some training in
machine learning uh and AI which I mean
I don't really believe even to this day
I I don't really believe that so the
reason I didn't accept was because I got
an offer that was substantially better
in terms of total compensation but also
um they were more generous with their
relocation package and also more uh
lacks with the time frame of me moving
to the Seattle area which I'm really
glad I did because it was a huge pain
organizing uh a move cross country to to
the Seattle area um I ended up paying
like $110,000 out of pocket after even
the generous relocation package so do I
regret it I don't know uh machine
learning AI is pretty huge right now but
one thing I have noticed is that the
machine learning AI field is less
welcoming to people with with no degree
whereas there's not really that stigma
in the security field so I think I made
the right choice do you think I have up
let me know in the comments