Amazon software engineer interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#151

Post by spapas82 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 6:58 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #81

spapas82 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stressfu…

Agreed to your argument about the temporary-evaluation job being only possible for a junior developer and not to somebody that already has a job. However you should also add to them all the cases of senior developers without jobs (yes, such cases do exist) -- a temporary evaluation job is better than nothing.

Senior developers that have jobs won't take the risk of leaving their current job and going to an evaluating position. But these people also shouldn't be interviewed -- since they have already have jobs, a talk about their previous projects and work should be enough for anybody to decide if they are good enough.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#152

Post by spapas82 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:11 AM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #65

spapas82 wrote: post #60

This is totally crazy to me. Why should somebody lose about a month of his life to prepare for the interview? Why should the interview need preparation at all? The whole point of the interview is lost if you read books and prepare for that since you are not tested for your real on-the-work skills but you are tested for your interview-answering skills, memorizing trick questions and solving toy problems! I think that…

I agree with you on the idea that is definitely seems crazy to ask for this sort of prep from job seekers, and I also agree that such things do not do a great job of directly testing real world work skills. However, I've worked for a couple of companies that had this sort of interview process, and I've worked for a couple of companies that did not, and I found that the quality of engineers working for the former is s…

There are lots of companies that don't ask any technical questions in interviews - these will definitely make many bad hires, that's true - there are lots of "software engineers" that just can't program anything. I'm not against the idea of asking technical stuff in an interview or asking somebody to scratch you a small program. What I'm against is this whole business of needing to prepare for many hour/days just to go to an interview.

For the good-engineer going to companies with rigorous interview process argument, a really good engineer with high confidence then definitely wouldn't start reading books about how to answer interview questions and tricks but go to the interview without any preparation. However I'm not sure if he'd be better than a worse engineer that took the time to prepare for the interview...

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#153

Post by badminton1 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:42 AM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #5

pfarnsworth wrote: post #2

If he signed an NDA, I probably wouldn't write a blog post about the interview process, that's a good way of getting fired for cause, since the late 1990s.

I don't think you need to treat an NDA as a blanket 'you can say absolutely nothing'. The post is 90% about his own preparation process, and 10% about the day-of schedule for interviews. The schedule of the day-of process is not exactly a secret, everyone that has interviewed at Amazon went through something like it. The recruiters should be telling you what to expect before you even get there. It's not like he gave…

Most companies voluntarily send interview preparation tips. Recruiters want to get people recruited to get their commission.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#154

Post by WWLink » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:05 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #149

asQuirreL wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the willingness to prepare indicates the candidate is motivated and the algorithmic knowledge they gain from it forms a solid basis and language in which it is possible to test their problem solving abilities?

Right. I figure also that a candidate who'll do the homework necessary to prepare for the interview rather than winging it will be more likely to do the homework necessary for the real problems he'll face at work. (I've known many engineers who wing things at work rather than spend the time to research a correct solution, and not just in software.)

I'm not doing homework if I'm not getting paid overtime. XD

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#155

Post by tluyben2 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:15 AM UTC

plandis wrote: post #82

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'…

> compared next to the technical leaders / senior engineers at these companies.

You feel that way because you actually didn't do anything you consider cool or you didn't do anything others consider cool? I did a lot of cool stuff; not really interested if others find that cool or not and certainly, without meeting the perceived 10x engineers you are referring to, I am not going to blindly say I would somehow rank lower as an engineer because I don't work in one of those companies or because I was not in the startup phase of one of those companies (you know, at the time when you didn't have to do those silly tests and the bar or entry to jump to the top rank was lower because it was a startup).

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#156

Post by tluyben2 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:30 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #149

asQuirreL wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the willingness to prepare indicates the candidate is motivated and the algorithmic knowledge they gain from it forms a solid basis and language in which it is possible to test their problem solving abilities?

Right. I figure also that a candidate who'll do the homework necessary to prepare for the interview rather than winging it will be more likely to do the homework necessary for the real problems he'll face at work. (I've known many engineers who wing things at work rather than spend the time to research a correct solution, and not just in software.)

Hi Walter, nice to see you again; another (similar to last time) interview process, another discussion here :) Not sure which country you are from, assuming US here; seems your experiences, again, vary wildly from what I see here. The refusal to study this useless stuff upfront had absolutely no baring on their 'refusal of whatever' on the workfloor or 'winging things at work'; employees should refuse things that are a waste of time in my company and they should explain why. If they do that with this 'pre-interview studying', I like them more than the ones who cram all to please the interviewer and show their willingness to do whatever they are told. I think that might be Dutch attitude though so not saying right or wrong here. I think, considering your previous responses that you mean it more subtly as well though.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#157

Post by WWLink » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:31 AM UTC

cs2818 wrote: post #118

This whole prep for interview testing seems very unpleasant and of questionable value to me. Are these interviews in any way representative of day to day operations in the job you are applying for? I worked as an independent software developer while doing my undergraduate in CS and was very successful just by using fundamentals I learned in courses and then reading and supplementing new things. I then transitioned in…

Amen to that. :)

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#158

Post by dozzie » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 9:21 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #150

mavelikara wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you need someone to brush up on their algo knowledge for your job interview? Do you believe that algo prep would make them better at their job? Ahem, Walter writes programing language compilers for industrial use. I strongly suspect that algo prep will make them better at their job if he was involved in the hiring :-)

Actually, if you asked me cold about various algorithms, I'd probably bomb the answer. But that isn't a problem, as when I need to know some detail it's trivial to look it up. But if I'm going on an interview for a job I cared about, and I expected algorithm questions, I'd consider trolling up on that stuff to be required homework.

That's an approach I don't understand. If you would "bomb the answer", it means you don't understand and don't feel the algorithm behind. Merely "looking up some detail" doesn't help with that.

It's not like one can look some detail up when he doesn't remember the detail was even there. Good software programmer needs a large working set of such details to sensibly function in a professional setting.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#159

Post by willtim » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 9:26 AM UTC

I can't help but feel that there is too much focus on data structures and algorithms. My kids have Amazon Fire Kid tablets and Amazon's software is, to put it mildly, unreliable. I'm sure the data structures and algorithms are probably fine, they're mostly shipped with the plethora of open source that most software is now built from anyway.

Re: Amazon software engineer interview

#160

Post by exolymph » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #147

driverdan wrote: post #129

Between bad interviews I've been in or read about and spending the past 6+ months working on our hiring process I've become very opinionated about hiring. The process Amazon and many other tech companies use is fucking terrible. Algorithm tests and surprise CS 101 questions do not identify good employees. They're biased towards recent grads, do not address most real world situations, can be gamed through studying, an…

This is awesome. What company is this?

> Director of Engineering at Ownlocal (YC W10).

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=driverdan