Tell us when you provided a simple solution to a complex problem.
The interviewer asked this amazon leadership principle interview question to take an idea of Invent and Simplify principle. At Amazon, managers expect invention from their teams and find ways to simplify things. Candidates should be externally aware, and innovative and should not be limited to “not invented here”.
“I faced a situation where infrastructure testing had not been completed by my team in my last project. Sponsors did not want to move ahead without testing firewall connectivity between servers. I stayed long that night and was running a set of different telnet commands, but I knew I would never finish that on time. So, I thought to automate that, but my client had not provided me access because of company policy.
In the end, I implemented a method based on Java-based shell API Jcraft JSch. That method worked and I sent the results to the client on the same night. He was totally impressed and granted me to build my POC into a tool that can be used by the entire team.”