I feel like I'm missing something. Why would you ever respond to that listing? No meaningful description of the company, no outstanding benefits, just the promise of being overworked?
Amazon's First Job Listing
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Re: Amazon's First Job Listing
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Re: Amazon's First Job Listing
#16>You must have experience designing and building large and complex (yet maintainable) systems, and you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible. I wonder if working nights and weekends was a bonus? What's wrong with being competent and putting out a reasonable amount of work and not being overworked and under pressure?
If you listen to the war stories, a large number of other successful tech companies or products like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, the original iPhone, the original Blackberry, the post-iPhone Android, etc. would nove have been successes if everyone had strictly done their 9-5, Mo-Fr. Success often means racing to get to market with significant lead over your competitors who are also working on solving the same problems…
Yea but it's also the reason a ton of start ups fail. I've run the gambit of startups. The biggest reason I've seen them struggle or fail is,
1. Over engineering too early. 2. Making bad decisions because everyone is exhausted and pissed off. 3. Everyone racing to "seize power" rather then focussing on the product or actual customer wins. IE, a bunch of antisocial engineers end up in people leader roles because they are good engineers rather then tech. Leadership.
Number 2 is a serious problem. The things I've had bosses pulling 80 hour weeks say to me and others has been astounding. Like if you wrote them down and showed them to a fifth grader they'd think you were insane.
Re: Amazon's First Job Listing
#17Fascinating that he wanted an expert C developer with a PHD who'd build stuff in one third of the time it takes others.
Hiring C developers back in the day was smart. It meant someone knew computers as much as they knew software.
Re: Amazon's First Job Listing
#18I feel like I'm missing something. Why would you ever respond to that listing? No meaningful description of the company, no outstanding benefits, just the promise of being overworked?
It's interesting to observe that the person who this language did resonate with is likely a billionaire now.
Re: Amazon's First Job Listing
#19I feel like I'm missing something. Why would you ever respond to that listing? No meaningful description of the company, no outstanding benefits, just the promise of being overworked?
Yup you’re missing something.
In addition to attracting qualified candidates, good job listings repel those who don’t agree with them. No one wants to sift through hundreds of applications.
Here’s the main mission filter: “to help pioneer commerce on the Internet.”
technical filter: “you should be able to do so in about one-third the time”
and culture filter: “Expect talented, motivated, intense, and interesting co-workers.”
If you didn’t get these things or why they were important, early Amazon wasn’t for you.
On the other hand, if you saw these lines and said “holy cow this is the future and I want to be a part of this”, then you’d roll the dice and apply.
This style of recruiting isn’t a numbers game and doesn’t appeal to the average person.
Re: Amazon's First Job Listing
#20I wonder who they ended up hiring for this opening. If they see this, maybe they can respond how the job went.