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Amazon data science interview questions

mldatageek.herokuapp.com

21–30 of 95 posts

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#21

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

Can you elaborate on the whole "day one" thing? Sounds interesting.

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#22
post #20

Interesting that it seems to be all on the stats side and less on engineering. For anyone that wants to get the background for any of this I highly recommend ISLR (and ESL as a reference). http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/

I bet that's because statistics knowledge is much more scarce in the industry right now.

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#23

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

> - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects.

I respectfully disagree. Recruiters and hiring managers, and even individual interviewers take me far more seriously after having "Google" on my resume than they did before. It's not enough to land a good job automatically, but most interactions now at least start from the presumption that I'm competent, which makes a job search less frustrating.

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#24
post #5

Can't say I could answer all these questions, but I think they're really great and motivate me to spend more time studying statistics. With the rise in data science and machine learning I've noticed a lot of resources devoted to teaching people how to create and train models for a given problem, but less resources on how to interpret those models and on statistical inference in general.

It's quite rare to find folks in the industry with formal education in statistics. The folks that have it can run circles around everyone else, though. Data Science and Analytics and Machine Learning all use statistical theory when boiled down.

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#25
post #21

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

Can you elaborate on the whole "day one" thing? Sounds interesting.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#26

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

This doesn't really match up with my anectodal experience - the number of recruiter emails I get every week has more than tripled since I started working at Spotify (after working at a number of smaller startups before).

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#27

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

People generally make more money at big companies especially when you factor in 401k and healthcare benefits. However impact is lower at big companies for the average employee. If you want a job with a large impact and good/great money then profitable medium-sized companies are where it is at.

As for name recognition, it always helps. No employer is going to hire someone solely based on where they went to school or where they worked previously. However a well-known school or company can be the deciding factor between two candidates who are otherwise equal. My wife went to Purdue and did her pharmacy residency in Colorado. She later found out that she was competing with three other candidates for one position who were equally as good in the eyes of the residency program, and she won because she graduated from a well-known, top 10 pharmacy school.

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#28

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

> - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. I respectfully disagree. Recruiters and hiring managers, and even individual interviewers take me far more seriously after having "Google" on my resume than they did before. It's not enough to land a good job automatically, but most interactions now at least start from the presumption that I'm competent, which makes a job search less frustrating…

I haven't worked for AppAmaGooBookSoft, but I know if we got an ex-Googler or similar at many of the places I've worked at, they'd be widely respected/feared by my peers on that virtue alone, and it'd certainly help a lot in the hiring process.

I know some well-known niche companies with highly-coveted positions that appear to make new hires almost exclusively from AppAmaGooBookSoft alumni (last time I mentioned this, a user correctly guessed one of the companies I was referring to from just such a vague description).

The reality is that most people hate hiring and have no idea whatsoever how to do it well (in the sense of bringing on competent people, not from the HR perspective of minimizing legal liability). Big names, in either education or employment history, help a lot. It's probably easy to underestimate how much they help if you haven't gone without them.

I would also venture that ex-BigNameCo is a lot less of a big deal if you work somewhere that's a hotspot for that type of company (Silicon Valley, Seattle). There it may be seen more as a sign of rejection than success, like "Why don't you still work at Google if you were Google material?". But even still, most companies are going to be swayed significantly by a big name on the resume.

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#29

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

This is terrible advice.

First, because I think you're factually mistaken - for a lot of people, a big name on your resume is a huge, positive flag.

Second, because there are other effects of working at a large company which you're not considering. Most importantly - they're large! That means you're going to interact with a huge amount of people. In 3 years at a BigCo, you'll likely have contacts not only in various departments, but probably in several other companies as well, both because of work with outside companies, and because of interacting with employees who left.

Not to mention, you can learn a lot about the industry that you might not necessarily be exposed to while at a small startup - via interactions with those outside companies (customers, partners, etc). You can also work on seriously big things, which you won't be working on at a startup, for example.

None of this is to say that working at a BigCo is the right move. I actually tend to think the opposite, depending on various factors. But it's definitely not an all-downsides proposition.

Re: Amazon data science interview questions

#30

It appears that the current generation of "hackers" seems very keen to work for a big name company-- Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. As someone who has worked for many startups and several of the above named companies, please let me give you a bit of advice: - A big company on your resume has no outside value to your prospects. Seriously. There's not "hey well he worked for amazon so we know he's good" fr…

My experience is completely different from yours in regards to every single point you make. Working at a big company (amazon) has increased my salary significantly, made me better technically, and noticeably made it easier for me to find a job elsewhere afterwards (this could be because my technical skill were better afterwards, and I had more experience). Additionally, I actually loved my team at Amazon. My manager was incredibly empathetic and caring, far more than any managers I have had at smaller companies before. I just wanted to provide a different perspective, and show that generalizing about companies, especially large ones, is a bad idea and often grossly incorrect. Your experience and the people you talked to (likely) represent a very small part of the whole company.
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