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Amazon software engineer interview

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Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#81

Post by linkregister »

spapas82 wrote: post #72
linkregister wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get the impression that the author took a month off work to do the interview prep; judging by the work load (3 exercises per chapter, a few STAR-format essays), it looks like the amount of time one would have after work and on weekends. For someone working full-time it would be grueling, but no more grueling than the workload in an after-work Master's degree program. I view the interview prep ritual as a nec…

Thank you for your last comment :) I'm not sure about how much time is lost for preparation to the interview in the general case (however I saw people recommending whole books in other comments) but the real issue is that even one day lost to preparing for something that you shouldn't prepare for is way too much! I don't agree in comparing the interview preparation with the work for the Master's degree because, altho…

I hear the temporary-work evaluation advocated on HN frequently, but this is a viewpoint almost exclusively held by junior developers. Those with families would find it difficult to accept the risk they may be terminated after the eval period. Senior developers aren't going to quit their job on the hope they won't be terminated at the end of the evaluation period. Job searching from scratch takes time and is stressful. Companies aren't going to spend half of the eval period training a new hire only to realize many of them aren't good enough (since they didn't screen them in a rigorous interview process). The risks don't align with anyone's incentives except for new grads, who have much less to lose.

I hear the argument, "if you know you're good, you'll make it," but if the hiring decision is pushed out to the end of an evaluation period, then the same arbitrary factors that lead interviewers to decline good candidates will also influence the long-eval period method as well. Case in point: Google Finance hires new grads almost exclusively from their pool of interns. Most don't make it, though many are talented. For a student, taking an internship is a no-risk move, since they will be returning to classes anyway. I can't a rational developer with a family accepting a similar arrangement: where the odds suggest she won't make it.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#82

Post by plandis »

mratzloff wrote: post #29

If you feel a great sense of accomplishment from being hired at Amazon, that's fine. If you believe that you are a superior engineer on the basis that you were hired by Amazon (or Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.), you are making a very bad assumption. Some current engineers and alumni believe this fallacy because it supports their beliefs about themselves. It's a trap that stifles their growth. It's as if people ar…

I actually think you have it backwards. A lot of those engineers probably feel the opposite because those companies have some amount of truly amazing engineers that those other employees get to work with. For instance I'm like 4 day old garbage compared next to the technical leaders / senior engineers at these companies.

One of my friends used to work right next to some of the engineers that initially created EC2. I'd be feeling more like I'm not worthy because I haven't created anything as cool or worth near as much.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#83

Post by plandis »

einrealist wrote: post #45

I don't understand why to have all these tests for an applicant? Why not integrate an applicant into a team for a day and have pair programming sessions? I found, that nothing else works.

Amazon is a huge company I'm sure they have a lot of different interview types

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#84

Post by yomly »

catchmrbharath wrote: post #48
geoelectric wrote: post #40

I'm all for interview prep, but this sounds like a fairly standard tech company loop. I usually take a few days to brush up on algorithms and structures for the first one I do in a batch, and have some canned answers for the personal questions, but otherwise go in with what I know. Some of that's experience now, but I don't remember any point in my career where I'd have done something this extensive. I hope the poste…

I had this view when I was interviewing for internships during this quarter. I have spent working and interviewing at a couple of places, before I came to pursue my masters and I believed people valued coming up with the solution on the spot. I interviewed at atleast 10 places for internships and every single of them asked one of the questions from either leetcode or cracking the coding interview. I found none of the…

> I believed people valued coming up with the solution on the spot.

So I 100% agree with this. Being intuitively clever and being able to apply what you know is intrinsically valuable:

Think of the extreme, imagine someone who is unable to apply something they've learnt unless it's exactly in the context they learnt it.

That said, I think it's often underestimated how valuable prep is. Some people even get a bit salty over it, people who are unwilling to "jump through the hoops".

As a teacher, I've seen all kinds of people, people who need absolutely nothing to figure out things on their own, whose limit is only their imagination. On the other hand, there are bright people who need a bit of guidance but are nonetheless otherwise very brilliant.

We are the sum of our experiences. How we've arrived at our present is completely unrelated to other people's. Some people have had parents who are scientific, other people were hacking consoles/linux/coding since they were 10. Other people got bored with their careers and decided to try something new in their late 20s.

Who's to say a month of prep is too much or too little to get ready for an interview.

Though, to the people who want to derive everything on the spot, I'd ask:

"how did you figure out how to start a fire?"

"when did you derive differential calculus?"

"how old were you when you solved the schrodinger equation?"

My point is, "solving something on the fly" is a misnomer. Without a doubt, it takes intelligence to apply a combination of tricks to a new problem in an unfamiliar context. But trying to come up with a solution when you've never seen the trick is a completely different ballgame, and its worth trying to see the picture from a different perspective.

Is the interview process flawed? Well that's an entirely different question ..

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#85

Post by poopsintub »

catchmrbharath wrote: post #48
geoelectric wrote: post #40

I'm all for interview prep, but this sounds like a fairly standard tech company loop. I usually take a few days to brush up on algorithms and structures for the first one I do in a batch, and have some canned answers for the personal questions, but otherwise go in with what I know. Some of that's experience now, but I don't remember any point in my career where I'd have done something this extensive. I hope the poste…

I had this view when I was interviewing for internships during this quarter. I have spent working and interviewing at a couple of places, before I came to pursue my masters and I believed people valued coming up with the solution on the spot. I interviewed at atleast 10 places for internships and every single of them asked one of the questions from either leetcode or cracking the coding interview. I found none of the…

It's not that they didn't care. but for that role, you're probably ahead of 75% of other applicants by responding with something useful.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#86

Post by jknoepfler »

superuser2 wrote: post #43
jknoepfler wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see how "whiteboard interview" prep mirrors standardized test prep. What is frustrating is that the prep month (?! a month is an eternity) could have been used to contribute to an personal project of choice, which would have said a lot more about the author's ability to program.

>which would have said a lot more about the author's ability to program It's my understanding that such a portfolio would increase your chances of entering an interview pipeline (just as work sample tests are sometimes used as further prerequisites to get into the pipeline), but a company's actual determination of how good you are is always based on the whiteboard, with few if any exceptions.

Oh, absolutely. I'm not questioning the author's decision to study rather than build something. The author's goal was to get a job, and he did the thing you do if you want a job. I've worked as an SDE at Amazon; it was a good experience and I wish the author the best. I just don't believe that the whiteboarding the author did to get the job was a good predictor of engineering ability. I think the wrong actions are being perversely incentivized, and I think that makes us weaker and worse-off as a community of engineers.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#87

Post by geoelectric »

soham wrote: post #77
geoelectric wrote: post #40

I'm all for interview prep, but this sounds like a fairly standard tech company loop. I usually take a few days to brush up on algorithms and structures for the first one I do in a batch, and have some canned answers for the personal questions, but otherwise go in with what I know. Some of that's experience now, but I don't remember any point in my career where I'd have done something this extensive. I hope the poste…

Interesting and valid points. I have some things to add. Disclaimer first: I'm a technical interview coach. We run http://InterviewKickstart.com , which provides structured and intense group programs for early and mid-career software engineers, with the sole purpose of preparing for technical interviews. In an ideal world, brushing up is all what it should take before going into interviews. Practicing Software Engine…

This is a really awesome response, coming from an expert in the field.

It makes me a little sad to read some of this, since it runs a little counter to what I thought was becoming a more general understanding about how to and how not to interview candidates. I give search/social companies a pass because the algorithms and graph theory are core skills there, but in general it's well-known that any kind of closed question isn't all that valuable in an interview, tech or otherwise.

I don't see programming problems any differently. Looking for a "right" answer just means they know what you know and maybe think like you think. It's a very egocentric way to proceed, to be honest. I don't need a team of me!

But it does open my eyes a bit to the fact that new grads may have a pretty different experience than others. I'll try to keep that in mind in the future. I don't want to interview this way, but if I know someone has expected to interview this way it'll help me understand them better.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#88

Post by cperciva »

exabrial wrote: post #38

When I interviewed for Amazon for a Java position, they had a C guy give the interview. When he asked me to implement atoi() on Java, Integer.parseInt() was the not correct way to do things at Amazon. After that it was all sys admin questions about the version of Linux they use. Somehow I managed to pass to the next level. I told them no thanks.

When he asked me to implement atoi() on Java, Integer.parseInt() was the not correct way to do things at Amazon.

I have to agree with them here. If you're being asked to implement a function for parsing integers, they're clearly not looking for an answer of "I call a function which parses integers".

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#89

Post by jfoutz »

exabrial wrote: post #38

When I interviewed for Amazon for a Java position, they had a C guy give the interview. When he asked me to implement atoi() on Java, Integer.parseInt() was the not correct way to do things at Amazon. After that it was all sys admin questions about the version of Linux they use. Somehow I managed to pass to the next level. I told them no thanks.

I don't know how to get straight ascii out of a java string off of the top of my head. I guess in this situation i'd start with a little discussion of unicode, then just start with something like

    byte[] ascii; 
    ...

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#90

Post by spdy »

blueatlas wrote: post #9

In total I had a little less than one month to prepare for the interview. I can't help but to wonder if it was really worth it. Surely, his prep helped him get the job, but the entire prep stage he describes seems like a very high up-front cost. I've always felt that if I can't get through an interview with a little prep and my existing skills, I don't belong. You should know exactly why you want to work for Amazon.…

> You should know exactly why you want to work for Amazon.

Never understood this company pride thing i like to work on interesting problems and if your company sells shoes or chewing gum so be it. Your problem space should attract programmers not who you are.

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