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My Interviews with Amazon

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Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#141

Post by 8note »

plandis wrote: post #79
gdulli wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find anecdotes about how working at any company is a bad experience and others about how it's a good experience. With Amazon, however, there's something qualitatively different. The anecdotes and evidence of it being a terrible place to work far outweigh the positive. Its bad reputation is confirmed by things you read about their policies, quotes from Jeff Bezos, etc. Poor treatment of employees is consistent…

I've worked at Amazon for around 4 years now. I work 9-5 most days. The days I don't I'll work 10-6! I still work there because I get to work on interesting distributed systems. I've never really had any of the bad experiences that others have seem to had. I reasonably get along with my manager, his manager, and the VP of my organization. They are not the assholes that every complaint seems to mention. Even in Seattl…

I recently accepted a job offer with Amazon and had fun with it.

I got a random email saying they were coming to my hometown, so I did the "2hr" coding test everyone is complaining about... which was actually really easy and more like 1hr.

then the day of, I biked down the river for coffee and lunch, then spent the afternoon coding on paper/laptop, and talking about past tech things I've done and why/how I did them. It was mostly a half and half split between the discussion and problem solving, then me trying to code one of my solutions in the last 10min of each interview, and mostly running out of time:P

The next day they invited me to move to seattle, and out for beers that evening.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#142

Post by burdalane »

larrik wrote: post #3

Interesting, I get pestered by them constantly, and never actually considered going for it. For one thing, the common sentiment on HN seems to be 'friends don't let friends work for Amazon'. Amazon seems like a meat grinder, where getting hired isn't as hard as it seems, and they just burn through young people who don't know better. This is as someone completely on the outside who's only heard stories, though. When I…

I've replied to Amazon recruiters. I did one phone interview with them, and another time, I sent my resume to the recruiter as requested and never heard anything back. For me, at least, it seems that getting hired is hard.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#143

Post by linkregister »

superswordfish wrote: post #132
linkregister wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unlike HN, I've never seriously considered joining a mega-corporation Isn't the startup deified on HN more than any other type of company? Of course there are all kinds on here; it seems strange to stereotype HN posters that way.

Once upon a time. Sadly, now a position as a Google SRE seems most prized here, followed by work for other big corps.

Can you talk more about this? The only HN SRE discussions I have seen were when the Google SRE book was released and yesterday's Stack Overflow salary calculator was posted.

I still maintain that in most comments portions, "startup" generates more hits than "Google". And "SRE" is still pretty rare.

This thread contains more "startup" than "Google". And we're the only two posters talking about "SRE".

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#144

Post by gdulli »

8note wrote: post #141
plandis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked at Amazon for around 4 years now. I work 9-5 most days. The days I don't I'll work 10-6! I still work there because I get to work on interesting distributed systems. I've never really had any of the bad experiences that others have seem to had. I reasonably get along with my manager, his manager, and the VP of my organization. They are not the assholes that every complaint seems to mention. Even in Seattl…

I recently accepted a job offer with Amazon and had fun with it. I got a random email saying they were coming to my hometown, so I did the "2hr" coding test everyone is complaining about... which was actually really easy and more like 1hr. then the day of, I biked down the river for coffee and lunch, then spent the afternoon coding on paper/laptop, and talking about past tech things I've done and why/how I did them.…

It's a first date, both sides are on their best behavior. The more turnover you have, the more people you need to hire. And the more effort you need to put into convincing people to join.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#145

Post by ljk »

outworlder wrote: post #89

A whole day dedicated to onsite interviews, plus traveling time. How do employed people manage that? I understand that, from the company's point of view, 1 day is still to short to assess someone. But it is still a lot of time dedicated to an offer that may or may not materialize.

> How do employed people manage that?

taking day off from work.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#146

Post by eamsen »

Buge wrote: post #114
magic_beans wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if one has accepted the offer, which, spoiler alert , this guy did not.

I'm pretty sure I had to sign NDAs regarding coding questions before any interviews happened (not Amazon, a different company).

Interesting, I've never had to sign an NDA before my interviews (at top tech companies) including the on-site/offer stages.

I don't share questions as a matter of principle, fwiw.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#147

Post by [deleted] »

ivraatiems wrote: post #5

Good on the author for making the decision based on his and his family's needs and not "but it's a top-tier company, man, you gotta work for the best be the best do the BEST." People often don't consider cost-of-living when making job decisions. I think the way to do it is to equalize the salaries based on cost-of-living across each company you're considering. So if you make $60,000 in a small midwestern town, that's…

[deleted]

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#148

Post by superuser2 »

hackcasual wrote: post #98
sgk284 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos set a mandate to HR a few years ago that he wanted them to be able to hire a new grad without ever needing to speak to a human engineer. That is, he wants the entire interview process automated (specifically for new grads, at least for now). What you experienced is part of their experiment in figuring out how to make this work. They've got a number of variations of interviews going on right now. I believe this…

Ex amazonian here. About 5 years ago I was invited to beta test an online automated coding system, the stated goal of which was that upon passing, you would be given an offer for an SDE1 position. No webcam stuff, just checking your coding solutions. I don't believe that ever rolled out in that state.

As a proponent of work-sample tests over whiteboards, that would've been a positive step, honestly. Too often the actual coding project is just another hurdle to weed people out before the real test (whiteboarding); actually making offers on the basis of work-samples is pretty progressive.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#149

Post by superuser2 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #112
throwaway52584 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although being asked to code on webcam is obnoxious, it's probably also a symptom of cultures where people exploit every trick in the book to game university admissions, exams, job interviews, etc.

Absolutely. That's part of why I stressed that it didn't seem to be standard Amazon policy - it looked like some hiring agent had decided "No fraud on my watch!" and pushed through an aggressive policy to make it happen. My complaint was that it seemed both ineffective (imagine candidates with the Big-O cheatsheet taped above their monitor) and obnoxious (I wasn't even going to talk to an employee until I jumped thro…

>imagine candidates with the Big-O cheatsheet taped above their monitor

You need some interesting mental gymnastics to explain why this is even a problem, given that they could easily have the same cheatsheet taped on their cubicle wall after getting the job.

Re: My Interviews with Amazon

#150

Post by drewrv »

larrykubin wrote: post #99
plandis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why is Seattle so bad you'd give up the relative safety to live in a third world country?

I live in Seattle. I get really depressed from December-February due to the lack of sunshine, and I've found it to be a more difficult place socially compared to other cities I've lived and worked in. To the point where I have frequently thought about leaving. That said, I played beach volleyball all day yesterday with some friends as the sun set over the Olympic mountains in the background, and it was greatness. But…

The secret to living in Seattle is to take a week off in February and go to Hawaii or Cabo.
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