I was contacted out of the blue by a recruiter at Amazon stating that they thought I'd be a good fit for one of the higher ranking Support Engineer positions. I sent them an updated resume and it took just shy of two weeks to finalize travel plans.
I met with four people. It wasn't clear what their roles were within the organization, though two appeared to be mid level developers, and the others was were more senior resources on the technical management side of things.
One developer had me write some code to solve a particular problem and worked with me to find some of the flaws in my approach. While not perfect, I thought the solution was pretty close to correct, with only minor flaws that could be caught if I had a chance to debug it.
The other developer asked me to do some data modeling and write the corresponding code. I got the feeling that he didn't like my solution though I'm certain that it was 90+% correct.
The first senior manager I met with seemed rather aloof and wasn't terribly engaged. He asked me a few high level questions about my experience and wanted me to do a brain teaser. After giving me a couple vague hints, I didn't see the solution, and was stumped, so we moved on. In short, he did not ask me anything technical nor much about past experience. Very strange.
The other senior manager was totally different. He was very engaged and he asked me about my background, projects I worked on, how I dealt with certain situations, and we talked about some systemic problems and how I would address them. I thought that interview went really well and played to my strengths.
A week later, I got the news that they were not extending an offer. I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised. My guess is that it wasn't due to the interviews, but due to my level of experience and salary range.
After discussing the role in person, it became clear that it's really more of a junior/entry-level position. Folks apparently try to move from Support to SDE roles within a year or two.