That is inspiring. Can you tell us in detail what worked for you besides the hard work? Was it the school, some courses, internships, connections that landed you in Amazon?
I underwent a sea change regarding school. In my first undergrad stint, I didn't reflect on what I was learning or why. More important I didn't try to think about my strengths and desires, and try to fit my program to that. My second time through was laser focused on CS, math, and engineering. For me, that translated into close to two letter grades.
One thing I had picked up in between was a strong desire to learn the computer. I didn't grow up programming, so Perl was something of a revelation to me. I picked up C after that and read Code Complete, another revelation. About then I figured out that I wanted to work on software professionally.
I continued to work on programming skills and CS outside of the four walls of my program (and I still do).
There was no secret sauce in getting into Amazon. They were (and we still are) desperate for people, with hundreds of engineering openings today, who know CS fundamentals, are not one-trick ponies (ie, work at many levels of the stack, from UI through service to DB), and can code their way out of a paper bag. There is a ton of customer-impacting work to do and never enough engineers to do it all.
It is not an exaggeration to say that if you can solve algorithm, coding, and design questions in phone screens and on the white board, and communicate your thought process along the way, you will be head and shoulders above the vast majority of the candidate pool. Having a work record of delivering software products helps too. That said, you are not likely to pass the interview loop if you try to fake your way through.
After I finished the MS CS, I worked at a defense contractor and shipped some software in C++/Qt/MySQL. I learned a lot and loved my coworkers, but the defense industry environment was not for me. I read Steve Yegge's posts about Amazon and services and the rest, and that was for me. The ones about interviewing are all still relevant for the Amazon interview. The specific questions have changed, but the areas to bone up on are basically timeless.
Then I submitted my resume online for a position in Amazon's Recommendations team. I didn't know anyone in the company (although it turned out that I ran into acquaintances after I joined). I didn't get picked up by them but somebody else needed people badly and started the hiring process with me.
There are a broad range of teams and experiences at Amazon. Some teams are high pressure, high reward (Kindle comes to mind). Some are redefining industries, like AWS. Front-end vs. back-end. Huge resources, many dependencies, and a two-year roadmap vs. two guys launching a brand new business.
