My experience being interview by Amazon is mixed...I had a screening call + three phone interviews with Amazon, for an elite devops system/network team. They were amazing and very nice people, from the initial RH contact to the technicians evaluating me. Actually to be fair, EXTRA nice people. On the other hand, some other recruiter messed up, and put me with an interview that I only found out at the last minute it was for a system help desk position in some other occasion. That experience was horrible, and the technician who was supposed to conduct the interview missed it and passed on the interview to an indian employee which accent I barely could keep up with...I just did not abort the interview out of respect. What I would say is that they handle differently people that applies for the more important positions, and in that respect, they are not much more different from other big players in the industry. To give credit to Amazon, their hiring process seems to be saner than Google, where you get contacted by a lot of clueless 3rd party headhunters that try to coax senior people like me into lowly positions that do not match our experience.
My Interviews with Amazon
251–260 of 270 posts
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#252I'm a little confused. The recruiter said that $170-$200k was an acceptable range. Then they offered him the position for significantly less than that. I don't understand why he even considered the offer. I would have been really upset that they wasted my time with a bait and switch. Am wrong for feeling that way? Are there other factors to consider?
No, you aren't wrong. That recruiter did not do a good job. The salary range talk is always up front to ensure that candidates and the company aren't wasting one anothers time. If the process gets to the offer stage, it needs to be in the range discussed up front. It costs me money (in terms of PTO) to come out and interview, and it costs the company thousands in time and expenses to conduct it. That recruiter essent…
I got a couple of experiences worse than that, including one where they were stupid enough to put in writing a suggestion to enlist as a contractor/freelancer with a shadow organisation of them to match my requested range (which was nothing special)...I just replied in a sarcastic tone that for that situation my prices where 10 times that value, and fortunately, it was the last I heard from them.
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yah so this is the age old problem. Big companies do really big thing. Google is literally changing the world. But if you get a job there, you are employee #145,231. Maybe if you work hard for 5 years you can rise to the rank of middle manager, and attend a meeting with someone that reports to the CEO, and maybe you can try to get a project you want done scheduled. More likely you will just do the work you are assign…
Is the age old problem mean I'm too young to be taken seriously in any context?
Nothing about your age just a problem that isn't new.
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe that problem only impacts productivity significantly when attrition is high (suggesting that the problem might be with talent retention and not engineering effort spent on interviewing)?
Have you tried hiring dev's lately? It's a employee's market. We've made offers to a half dozen people in the last 4mo only to be beaten out by other firms. One guy who turned us down had 12 offers. Sure, you can compromise and take lower quality people, or pay more than anyone in your city, but if you want great people for top 20% of the market pay, it's a lot of work on the hiring side.
Pay more or work remote. You are likely limiting yourself to a tiny Geo area. No reason in 2016 we all need to sit in traffic to commute to work.
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically the company started expanding and their code base started falling apart at the seams. Two coders that each had "silos" with wedges to keep the two sides communicating together. One did web side - ordering, registration, etc on a Webform MVC customized hybrid. The other did floor applications. New customer? New database, website, etc. Sql statements? "If company a then select * from blah where field like '{t…
We probably disagree, but to me "code is shit" and "the company started expanding and their code base started falling apart at the seams" is a far cry from "can't code their way out of a wet paper bag". Sounds like they knew enough to patch together a system that made your company money for years. To me, that puts them squarely in the middle of "can't code their way out of a wet paper bag" and "good engineer I would…
I'm not super experienced but I read enough to know bad code when I see it.
* No separation of UI/Code. WinForms in all it's glory.
* SELECT * in code behind. Never anything else.
* WHERE field LIKE '{}' - never 'where field ='. Always like.
* {} is a from text entry fields. Sql Injection? Sanitation? Boundaries? What's that?
* Separate code paths for different companies because each customer had their own unique stack that diverged - Database tables, Winforms, processes. IF Company A then SELECT * FROM DBA.dbo.TblA WHERE FieldA = '{}' ELSEIF Company B then SELECT * FROM DBD.dbo.TblB WHERE FieldB = '{}'... etc.
* Copy Pasta all the way down.
* Never used source control until New Guard arrived (me being newest developer).
* Test environment? Waste of time... Everything done against production. I saw the old programmer jack up a sql query resulting in a data restore, and I've been here less than two weeks.
Trust me (as much as you can trust a random guy on the interwebz)... Their code is shit. Not "I'm an artist and think your artistry is shit" shit... but every bad idea you can consider in coding shit.
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
We probably disagree, but to me "code is shit" and "the company started expanding and their code base started falling apart at the seams" is a far cry from "can't code their way out of a wet paper bag". Sounds like they knew enough to patch together a system that made your company money for years. To me, that puts them squarely in the middle of "can't code their way out of a wet paper bag" and "good engineer I would…
I'm not super experienced but I read enough to know bad code when I see it. * No separation of UI/Code. WinForms in all it's glory. * SELECT * in code behind. Never anything else. * WHERE field LIKE '{}' - never 'where field ='. Always like. * {} is a from text entry fields. Sql Injection? Sanitation? Boundaries? What's that? * Separate code paths for different companies because each customer had their own unique sta…
I'm not saying their code isn't shit, just that it is shit code that works (for some purposes at least). That is much different from not being able to generate code that works at all. I would say these guys can "code their way out of a wet paper bag". They will just make a royal mess doing it.
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not super experienced but I read enough to know bad code when I see it. * No separation of UI/Code. WinForms in all it's glory. * SELECT * in code behind. Never anything else. * WHERE field LIKE '{}' - never 'where field ='. Always like. * {} is a from text entry fields. Sql Injection? Sanitation? Boundaries? What's that? * Separate code paths for different companies because each customer had their own unique sta…
I'm not saying their code isn't shit, just that it is shit code that works (for some purposes at least). That is much different from not being able to generate code that works at all. I would say these guys can "code their way out of a wet paper bag". They will just make a royal mess doing it.
I guess it's just a difference of terminology and/or nuance in terminology getting lost in "text". Hard to show sarcasm or "air quotes" in a text post :)
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#258I know people who have worked there and have read so many horror stories. And beyond that not even horror stories, just plain old stories about it being a shitty place to work.
I'm sure it's possible to get a good job there, not everyone's life can be miserable there. But I wouldn't roll those dice, would you?
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#259A 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.
Employed people mange that by not being chained to their desks?
Re: My Interviews with Amazon
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
After that Recruiter didn't even have the minimum courtesy to let me know what happened. That's pretty common recently for companies. I'm not sure why.
The worst I've seen is a recruiter that didn't tell me I had been accepted . I found out when someone at the company followed up on why I hadn't responded to the offer. I have no idea how a commission-based business manages to do something like that.
Are internal recruiters (sales people) commission based? Seems strange.