This probably varies greatly team-by-team. After all, it's a big company. I interned at Amazon over the summer, too, and basically did the same thing you did. H

This probably varies greatly team-by-team. After all, it's a big company. I interned at Amazon over the summer, too, and basically did the same thing you did. However, I did get a return offer at the end. Sounds like you were unlucky and had a bad experience with your team, and I'm sorry about that. But I will say that what makes the difference probably is communication. You were probably working enthusiastically and producing great code, but did your manager know that? Meanwhile, I wasn't so enthusiastic about my intern project (it was an accounting system, so yawn...), and I didn't really produce all that much code (it was mainly just gluing some existing systems together). Hell, for a whole week, I was blocked waiting for information from a team in India and spent the entire week working on a side project. However, my team had daily standup, and I always had something to say about what I was doing at the time and what I was stuck on. Perhaps you actually were good about communicating what you were doing and your manager just ascribed to the "time of butt in chair" method of measuring programmer productivity, which is unfortunate. But if you didn't, it's something to think about.